Saved by the Matchmaker (A Shanahan Match)
Part 2 of the Shanahan Match series. In 1849 St. Louis, a pregnant Enya Shanahan has run home from a failed marriage. To protect their business interests from scandal, her well-off family secures an annulment and employs Bellamy the matchmaker to find Enya a new husband. Sullivan O’Brien is from a steamboat-owning family, under pressure from his father to marry. Bellamy brings them together and, despite misgivings, Enya agrees to the match for the baby’s sake. Sullivan can hardly believe that such a beautiful woman would have him, because he has livid burns acquired in the Mexican War. And Enya is mentally scarred from her first marriage, “her shattered heart refused to believe any man could truly care without wanting something in return.”
The bulk of the novel concerns how they come to deal with their pasts so that they can attempt to make the marriage work. Both have hefty burdens of self-doubt and lack confidence. A subplot concerns Sullivan’s smuggling of escaped slaves from New Orleans on his steamboat to freedom in the north—can he trust Enya with the secret? Hedlund is good at creating sexual tension within the bounds of a “sweet” romance. Recommended.
