Review: Sweet
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 1, 2013
May-December romances are sometimes frowned upon. Age, life experiences, and differences in financial status, lifestyle, and background are separation enough, but the space between grows with a young, unmarried single mother, the limits of a wheelchair, and preconceived notions of sacrifice and love. But even if love were the hardest of jigsaw puzzles, only one solution completes the final picture.As a single teen mom, Tooty Townsend had made the best of a bad situation and didn't shirk the responsibilities that came with motherhood. Now twenty, the dabbling poet longed to make a better life for her young son Harris and move out of the home of her disapproving parents, even if it meant working two jobs to make that dream possible. Learning of a temporary job assisting a famous writer could make the dream a reality, so Tooty put on her game face and set her mind on obtaining her dream.But Miles Brightman wasn't what Tooty expected. Sure, a man with his success would be older, but finding the wheelchair-bound man incredibly sexy, even as he doubted her youthful abilities to do the job, was unforeseen, so Tooty had to prove herself and not let the handsome man distract her from her ultimate goal to put down roots.Upon first meeting Tooty, Miles was dismayed by her youth, but she quickly convinced him she was capable of acting as his temporary assistant, and her editing skills and suggestions were a surprise that invigorated his writing and gave him the courage to pursue the other genres he'd been wanting to break into. So when Tooty inherited a dilapidated rural home some distance away, Miles didn't want to lose his newly found employee and muse, so he offered to pay for renovations to the house and move in to his own room there to keep Tooty from having the added expense of driving her dilapidated pick-up truck miles into town to work every day.But life with a noisy toddler and a pretty young mother was a distraction that Miles hadn't counted on. Neither was the biological father who showed up to try and wheedle money out of Tooty.Once again, master storyteller Verna Clay wraps you up in the warmth and comfort of life in Paxtonville, Colorado and the caring and sense of community encompassed in her Romance on the Ranch series.Miles and Tooty are imperfectly perfect for one another, but Miles' wheelchair is the impediment that he uses to deny himself a chance at true love and happiness. His refusal of Tooty's heart takes her character from young, determined ingénue to a strong, stalwart woman who can handle life's disappointments with grace, bravery, and circumspection. While Tooty embraces life and makes lemonade from lemons, an unfulfilled Miles continues to seek that elusive happiness he had with Tooty, but it evades him until a chance conversation propels him back to Colorado and the home and sense of belonging he once shared with her.But the tables have turned and, having grown used to living life on her terms, Tooty, with advice from the old family diary, dictates the terms of Miles' surrender to all his heart truly desires.This almost sweet romance contains one mild sex scene and a warm little love story within a love story.Reviewed by Angie Just Read...for TheRomanceReviews.com