MARRYING AN OLDER MAN by Arlene James, Wagner #2, Silhouette Special Edition #1235, Rating: C

Twenty-one year old Caroline Moncton finds herself alone, needing to pay the rent on her own when her roaming mother moves to California despite Caroline's protests of moving again after having stayed put for four years. Her landlord then informs her she's selling her duplex and a seller might very well make it into a single-family home again. She does turn Caroline onto a possible job, though, as a helper for a friend's mother who has very bad arthritis. Caroline is aware of Jesse Wagner, having seen him visit the landlord on the sly. Caroline has decided that Jesse is the man for her and pursues the job in order to do the same with him.

Caroline is a likeable woman, spunky, intelligent, and goes after what she wants. Details of her childhood and the way her mother had different men with her all of the time, it makes the reader wonder how Caroline turned out so normal. We're glad she did, though.

Jesse Wagner isn't sure of Caroline's come-on's at first and resists them until she pulls out the big guns of seduction. At thirty-eight, he feels he's too old for her and that she's little more than a child with a crush. The pressure of not just taking care of the family ranch but his ailing mother and foul-mood father add onto the weighty thoughts already on his shoulders. He feels responsible for his first wife's death and hadn't remarried or gotten seriously involved with anyone believing marriage isn't meant for him.

Caroline and Jesse work very well together when it comes to his mother. She opens the eyes of many around the ranch and seems like a breath of fresh air. While I initially her going after him with really no idea who he was a little unsettling, I did find as the story went on that it was believable she would grow to have feelingsn for him. Jesse, after all, stands for one of the things Caroline never had: stability. A family that stays in place and stays together.

MARRYING AN OLDER MAN was a nice read. The setting was fun, Colorado during the winter, and I enjoyed the cast of supporting characters enough that I plan to look for the first book in the series, about Jesse's brother. I rate the book a C, mostly because I felt that Caroline's interest in Jesse at first was based on infatuation with an ideal of a man rather than the man himself.

©Susan Falk and phantomroses.com