Morning Comes Softly by Debbie Macomber

Montana rancher, Travis Thompson is desperate though he's not exactly ready to admit it, but ever since his brother and sister-in-law died a few months ago he has been having a lot of trouble taking care of his 2 nephews and niece: he's gruff and a bit of a loner, and he also has no housekeeping skills to speak of (his cooking and cleaning leave a lot to be desired).

When the social worker lets him know that, unless something changes, they will be taking the kids away, Travis decides to get married, to have a wife who would help him with the kids. To that effect, he posts a personal ad in the paper.

Said ad is answered by Mary Warner, a quiet and lonely librarian from Louisiana, who agrees to marry Travis without meeting him because she wants to feel needed and she knows that Travis' nephews and niece need her. So she packs up and moves to Montana not sure exactly how this marriage is going to work but determined to make a home for herself next to the Thompson family.

I don't mean this a in a bad way but Morning Comes Softly is the type of book you can easily turn into a Hallmark or Lifetime movie and though I found it generally OK, it wasn't very memorable. Plus and I a few pet peeves, Travis acts a lot like a jerk and I could never really believe the emotional connection between Travis and Mary, other than because they were both lonely. And I could never get a sense of the time the story was supposed to be set in- was it the 1990's? the 1980's? No clue.

The one thing I liked were the two younger kids of the story, Scotty and Beth Anne who often were the funniest and most endearing.

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