ONCE UPON A GROOM, book 2 in Karen Rose Smith's Reunion Bride Series, takes us back to Miners Bluff Arizona. Zack Decker, the award-winning movie director, is called back home when his somewhat estranged father, Silas, has a heart attack. Zack and Silas had a difficult relationship which was only made more distant when Zack choose filmmaking and Hollywood over running the Rocky D Ranch. Jenny Farber, Zack's high school love and the daughter Silas never had, chose to stay on the ranch rather than joining Zack in California. In the fifteen years since Zack left, Jenny has built a life for herself on the ranch and relishes the sense of community and home (something that she lost after the death of her mother when she was young). Now Zack is back, however reluctantly. Can they find a way to share a dream and have a future together?

ONCE UPON A GROOM is a sweet romance with complex characters who will tug at your heart. Both Zack and Jenny have to find a way to come to terms with both their family history and how their relationship ended when Zack left for California. Their emotional struggles felt genuine and created a compelling tension in the story. The one thing I struggled with was that Zack and Jenny spent so much time focused on the extreme differences between their life goals, I wondered why they should be together. I didn't get as strong a sense of the love they felt for each other as I would have liked. That said, I liked Jenny and Zack, and the supporting characters, and was pleased when they found their happy ending.

Book Summary

Zack and Jenny fell in love in high school. But Zack intended to escape the Rocky D while Jenny craved the roots she'd found on his parents ranch. With resentment and bitterness toward his father, blaming him for his mother's death, Zack found a life as a movie director with wealth, fame and privilege. Now when he returns to Miners Bluff, his father isn't the man he once was. And Jenny has a secret she has never divulged. Old fires reignite as Zack and Jenny fall in love all over again. Will their differences push them apart once more? Or can love truly conquer all?