At Love's Bidding by Regina Jennings

She Sells Priceless Antiques. He Sells Livestock by the Pound.

 

Is He Really the Man to Make a Bid for Her Heart?

     After helping her grandfather at their Boston auction house, Miranda Wimplegate discovers she's accidently sold a powerful family's prized portrait to an anonymous bidder. Desperate to appease the people who could ruin them forever, they track it to the Missouri Ozarks and make an outlandish offer to buy the local auction house and all its holdings before the painting can move again.

     Upon crossing the country, however, Miranda and her grandfather discover their new auction house doesn't deal in fine antiques, but in livestock. And its frustratingly handsome manager, Wyatt Ballentine, is annoyed to discover his fussy new bosses don't know a thing about the business he's single-handedly kept afloat. Faced with more heads of cattle than they can count - but no mysterious painting - Miranda and Wyatt form an unlikely but charged partnership to try and prevent a bad situation from getting worse.

Review: What a fun read! I like to mix up my reading - something chilling followed by something up-lifting and funny followed by something with a grand dose of imagination and so forth. I picked up a "At Love's Bidding" after getting scared senseless by Irene Hannon's latest thriller, and "At Love's Bidding" was the perfect selection to help me stop jumping at every sound and locking all my truck doors the second I was safely inside (No...I'm not jittery...no usually anyway).

Anyways, it was a very pleasant read. It made me laugh and I found it relaxing. The pace of the novel was leisurely; it was a simple plot but enough to keep me comfortably flipping the pages.

Since this was certainly a character focused story vs action focused, I'll concentrate my review by basing it on the three main leads.

I think my favourite character was Miranda's senile grandfather. Not going to lie ... he reminded me of some of my patients ... and he had me giggling often. I loved his crazy antics and blustering. He was the perfect supporting character and actually a real force for driving the story. I'm glad Ms Jennings wrote him into Miranda and Wyatt's tale - the story would not have been the same without him.

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc."
I found Miranda's character to be very sweet. She was portrayed as a beautiful rose with nary a thorn in a rugged and tough landscape. She is all sweetness and gentleness, and her big triumph is managing to make decisions without the aid of her over-bearing want-to-be-finance. She is kind and loving, but really doesn't do anything too remarkable in the story. Regardless, it's easy to see why Wyatt finds her so charmingly attractive.

Wyatt is a little harder to peg the first few times he enters the story. At first, I thought he might be the villain, but then I quickly realized he was a very honourable, good man with a rough family history that had left him with a few edges. He transforms very quickly from the mysterious, dark type to a very likeable guy.


Overall, I found "At Love's Bidding" to be a good read. I will certainly read more books by Regina Jennings. I did not find it to be the most exciting book, but it was perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Also, a fine read for younger girls looking for a good, clean Christian romance.

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc."