About the Book

Book: Practically Married

Author: Karin Beery

Genre: General Market, clean fiction, women’s fiction, contemporary romance

Release Date: October 22, 2019

She moved to a new town to marry her fiancé. Instead, she’s burying him.

Ashley Johnson moved to northern Michigan to finally meet her fiancé face-to-face, but she arrived in time to attend his funeral. With no home back in Ohio, she decides to stay in what would have been their house, except his cousin Russ lives there too, and Russ has never heard of Ashley. To complicate matters, her fiancé accidentally willed her the family farm house. Eager to please everyone and desperate to disappoint no one, she proposes a marriage of convenience that could solve her and Russ’ problems, if they can get past her aunt, his sisters, and an ex-girlfriend.

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About the Author

Karin Beery grew up in a rural Michigan town where she wrote her first novel in high school. Today, she writes contemporary stories with a healthy dose of romance. When she’s not writing fiction, she’s reading, editing, or teaching it. In her free time, she enjoys being at home with her husband and fur babies watching University of Michigan football and action-adventure movies.

My Review

I think it would be very challenging to attempt to write a believable, contemporary marriage of convenience love story. Karin Beery took on that challenge—and her characters are very lovable. I enjoy a good romance, even knowing how the story is going to end. And given the “happily ever after” ending that is expected, the story itself needs to grab me in order to satisfy my reader heart.

Practically Married by Karin Beery has a good premise. Main character, Ashley Johnson, shows up at a farm to marry a man she’s never actually met, although they’ve become very close friends via the Internet. Unfortunately, when she shows up as planned, she discovers he’s been killed in a hiking accident. Although he’s supposedly from a very close-knit family, no one has ever heard of Ashley.

I had a few problems with the story line. First, the conflict that needs to be evident to keep a reader reading seems contrived. For example, the dead fiancé “accidentally” willed the family house and farm to her. The details of said will are sketchy and unbelievable, and any first-year lawyer would have thrown it out, but it’s used as a launching pad for family tension.

Then in a blink of an eye, Ashley proposes to the dead fiancé’s, cousin, reasoning that since they’re both unattached, they might as well get married. It’ll be a marriage of convenience, just like she was expecting when she first arrived on the scene. Russ, Ashley’s new fiancé, seems happy to oblige, although he’s got some ex-stalker-girlfriend waiting in the wings to add some more weak drama. I had a difficult time buying their reasons for agreeing to the marriage of convenience because there was no in-depth backstory to justify it for either of them.

Beery uses multiple sisters, wedding slip-ups and a flaky main character to keep the action going, but by the time the couple decides to say, “I do,” I lost interest in whether they did or didn’t.

I received a complimentary copy for reviewing purposes, but the opinions are my own.

More from Karin

Why would two contemporary American’s agree to a marriage of convenience?

That’s what I asked myself when I sat down to write Practically Married. I love reading historical books about mail order brides and other arranged marriages, but I wanted to see if I could make that historical theme more modern (and still be believable).

That’s how Ashley and Russ came to be, and—after several revisions—I think I did it! It takes two to get married, but this is really Ashley’s story—it’s her past that inspires her future, and it’s up to her to decide where that inspiration with lead her.

The story couldn’t just be about their relationship, though. I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a big brother, so I gave Russ little sisters. And nieces and nephews. And a pie-baking mom who doesn’t like his beard (which may have been inspired my mother-in-law, who tried desperately to get my husband to shave his beard before our wedding). I also threw in some real buildings and places in northern Michigan (even though Boyne Falls is fictional). And it’s possible that some of my character names came directly from friends and other local inspirations. Practically Married isn’t only set in northern Michigan, it’s inspired by it.