Line by Line (Love along the Wires #1)

Line by Line (Love along the Wires #1)
By Jennifer Delamere
Published by Bethany House

Description:
Years of hard work enabled Douglas Shaw to escape a life of desperate poverty--and now he's determined to marry into high society to prevent reliving his old circumstances. But when Alice McNeil, an unconventional telegrapher at his firm, raises the ire of a vindictive co-worker, he must choose between rescuing her reputation and the future he's always planned.

Review:
This book started out a little slow for me. While I found Alice's occupation as a telegrapher and the look at business practices of the day to be interesting, I found Alice's insistence on never marrying a bit overly emphasized; I also found her friend Lucy's insistence that she should marry to be tiresome and really wanted Alice to tell her off! The story picked up for me about 20-percent through, and the final 25-percent was great--particularly the resolution--and moved very quickly.
My favorite things about the book:

• the historical setting was very interesting--there's a look at businesses, telegraphy, class differences, societal expectations for women, and more, all artfully woven into the story;
• Douglas's journey to realizing there's more to life than business and getting ahead financially and socially;
• Alice's intelligence--I love how quick-witted she was how she wanted to learn more about business and had valuable input;
• Alice's mishaps when she tried to use a book entitled The Spinster's Guide to Love and Romance to help her, not to find a husband but to get along better with men; 
• and, as previously mentioned, the resolution. I won't give details so there are no spoilers, but I love the way one character reached out to the other! 

Fun start to a new series! 4 stars.

I read an ARC provided by the author/publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.