Title: Brides of Chance Creek Series - Cora Seton (also fondly known as the Issued to the Bride series)
Media: Series of novels
Approx length: Six not-super-long books, all in a series but each somewhat stand-alone!
Where to find it: Here on Amazon, for one; I found them all on the ebook service Libby through my library as well!
What is it, in summary?: A series of contemporary western arranged-marriage military-adjacent romance novels... with magic! There's a lot going on there, I know. Basically, we have the General, who has been an absentee father to his five daughters since the death of his beloved wife a decade+ ago, choosing to send them caretakers and nannies as they grew up running semi-wild on his wife's Montana ranch instead of being there himself. The daughters are now all in their 20s and have gotten into trouble when some of the men the General sent to run the ranch instead of allowing his (very smart and capable!) daughters to run it themselves turn out to be rapscallions, scalawags, and generally nefarious individuals, as well as the daughters tending to fall in love with Bad Boys who are bad for them, so the General hatches a cleverly evil scheme in which he will gather up a troop of guys from various military branches who are all in some kid of trouble and blackmail/coerce them into going to his ranch, seducing his semi-estranged daughters, and marrying them in order to get the right kind of men into the family to help run the ranch.
What do you love about it?: I'm actually really fond of the whole series at this point; the women of Two Willows Ranch are spunky and individually interesting and the relationships among all the sisters + the oldest sister's best friend are great, the military guys are mostly your average romance-novel-male-lead jerks but they mostly shape up by the end of their books and I love the camaraderie among them, some of the romances are touching, the smut is good. It's fun! But my interest in the series lies almost entirely in the sixth book, Issued to the Bride: One Sergeant for Christmas, which focuses on the General's handsome and devoted young aide and right-hand man, Sergeant Emerson Myers, and how in love with his General this lonely orphaned woobie is and how he just wants to serve him and stay with him and be his man forever.
Okay, the book is not ABOUT that, but it almost is! Really, the General is very attached to his aide and wants to give him a share in the ranch after they both get injured and are probably going to have to retire from Army, but he's out of daughters to marry off to military guys, so he decides that Emerson must marry his oldest daughter Cass's best friend Wyoming, who is staying at the ranch and is similarly lonely, orphaned and woobie and in need of a place to call home (incidentally, Cass and Wye also love each other with deep intensity that may or may not be romantic if you read it that way!). The book is nominally about Emerson and Wye's romance and the obstacles they have to overcome on the way to the altar, but it's striking to me how non-centered their actual relationship is compared to Emerson's relationship with the General and Wye's with Cass.
(Oh, and did I mention the magic yet? Each of the daughters has a magical gift, inherited from their mother, who could see the future and whose advice the General still relies on, as she wrote him a whole box full of future-dated letters before she died to give him her perspective on what's going on with their kids. There's also a magical standing stone at the center of a hedge maze that predicts the future and may or may not be possessed by the spirit of the dead mother; unclear, but what is clear is that every couple in the books has semi-public sex against the standing stone at least once because... the magic compels them? It's, uh, something. (I love it. I need it for General/Emerson.))
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: General/Emerson, anything! I love their relationship so much and I yearn for any kind of fic, whether it's backstory or something going on during or after the events of the fic. There's so much potential to take this in any direction from mutual silent pining, to a 'they were actually together all along!' reveal, or anything else.
Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: Yes! I read the sixth book first without reading any of the others, and while it wasn't completely standalone (the magic stuff in particular and the thing with the dead wife's letters came as a big confusing surprise to me), it was mostly fine! If you want a little background you could probably read the first part of the first book, which sets up the General's scheme and introduces most of the characters; the General is present at the beginning of each book, and Emerson has brief appearances in the first four and then a slightly larger but still minor part in the fifth, but their main appearances are in the sixth book and I think you could get all the relevant plot and characterization just from that one. (If you're more interested in Cass and Wye, both of them appear throughout the series; Cass's book is the first one, and Wye has major roles in books five and six, but I definitely got enough to ship them just from the sixth book!)
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Plenty of romance-novel sex (all het), some mild violence, some threats of sexual violence (not in the sixth book, though), military and war themes and references.
Brides of Chance Creek Series - Cora Seton
Media: Series of novels
Approx length: Six not-super-long books, all in a series but each somewhat stand-alone!
Where to find it: Here on Amazon, for one; I found them all on the ebook service Libby through my library as well!
What is it, in summary?: A series of contemporary western arranged-marriage military-adjacent romance novels... with magic! There's a lot going on there, I know. Basically, we have the General, who has been an absentee father to his five daughters since the death of his beloved wife a decade+ ago, choosing to send them caretakers and nannies as they grew up running semi-wild on his wife's Montana ranch instead of being there himself. The daughters are now all in their 20s and have gotten into trouble when some of the men the General sent to run the ranch instead of allowing his (very smart and capable!) daughters to run it themselves turn out to be rapscallions, scalawags, and generally nefarious individuals, as well as the daughters tending to fall in love with Bad Boys who are bad for them, so the General hatches a cleverly evil scheme in which he will gather up a troop of guys from various military branches who are all in some kid of trouble and blackmail/coerce them into going to his ranch, seducing his semi-estranged daughters, and marrying them in order to get the right kind of men into the family to help run the ranch.
What do you love about it?: I'm actually really fond of the whole series at this point; the women of Two Willows Ranch are spunky and individually interesting and the relationships among all the sisters + the oldest sister's best friend are great, the military guys are mostly your average romance-novel-male-lead jerks but they mostly shape up by the end of their books and I love the camaraderie among them, some of the romances are touching, the smut is good. It's fun! But my interest in the series lies almost entirely in the sixth book, Issued to the Bride: One Sergeant for Christmas, which focuses on the General's handsome and devoted young aide and right-hand man, Sergeant Emerson Myers, and how in love with his General this lonely orphaned woobie is and how he just wants to serve him and stay with him and be his man forever.
Okay, the book is not ABOUT that, but it almost is! Really, the General is very attached to his aide and wants to give him a share in the ranch after they both get injured and are probably going to have to retire from Army, but he's out of daughters to marry off to military guys, so he decides that Emerson must marry his oldest daughter Cass's best friend Wyoming, who is staying at the ranch and is similarly lonely, orphaned and woobie and in need of a place to call home (incidentally, Cass and Wye also love each other with deep intensity that may or may not be romantic if you read it that way!). The book is nominally about Emerson and Wye's romance and the obstacles they have to overcome on the way to the altar, but it's striking to me how non-centered their actual relationship is compared to Emerson's relationship with the General and Wye's with Cass.
(Oh, and did I mention the magic yet? Each of the daughters has a magical gift, inherited from their mother, who could see the future and whose advice the General still relies on, as she wrote him a whole box full of future-dated letters before she died to give him her perspective on what's going on with their kids. There's also a magical standing stone at the center of a hedge maze that predicts the future and may or may not be possessed by the spirit of the dead mother; unclear, but what is clear is that every couple in the books has semi-public sex against the standing stone at least once because... the magic compels them? It's, uh, something. (I love it. I need it for General/Emerson.))
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: General/Emerson, anything! I love their relationship so much and I yearn for any kind of fic, whether it's backstory or something going on during or after the events of the fic. There's so much potential to take this in any direction from mutual silent pining, to a 'they were actually together all along!' reveal, or anything else.
Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: Yes! I read the sixth book first without reading any of the others, and while it wasn't completely standalone (the magic stuff in particular and the thing with the dead wife's letters came as a big confusing surprise to me), it was mostly fine! If you want a little background you could probably read the first part of the first book, which sets up the General's scheme and introduces most of the characters; the General is present at the beginning of each book, and Emerson has brief appearances in the first four and then a slightly larger but still minor part in the fifth, but their main appearances are in the sixth book and I think you could get all the relevant plot and characterization just from that one. (If you're more interested in Cass and Wye, both of them appear throughout the series; Cass's book is the first one, and Wye has major roles in books five and six, but I definitely got enough to ship them just from the sixth book!)
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Plenty of romance-novel sex (all het), some mild violence, some threats of sexual violence (not in the sixth book, though), military and war themes and references.