Mary Anne Wilson, Winning Sara’s Heart

Winning Sara's Heart

Mary Anne Wilson

Harlequin American, Feb 2004, $4.75, 251 pp.

ISBN: 0373750099

In Houston at the Lennox Caf , waitress Sara Flynn delivers food to a table when the customer, a prominent lawyer, stands up knocking everything off her tray. Her boss screams at her until another customer intercedes causing her to get an even bigger warning from her supervisor. Things turn brighter when another customer Mary Garner, who runs the LynTech day care center, offers Sara a part-time job there as well as a place for her child Hayley to stay gratis while mom works.

LynTech is sponsoring a charity ball that Sara is working on. EJS Corporation President E. J. Sommers, the caf customer who tried to help Sara with her boss, finds his father volunteered his services for the event. When Sara and E.J. meet again, he realizes he desires her like no woman he ever met. As they fall in love, he wants her and her daughter permanently with him, must put her suddenly interested ex husband in his place and explain to his beloved that he is a multimillionaire.

Though interesting in a Cinderella way, the tale loses some credibility with the manner E.J. tries to evade Sara's attempts to know him until he offers her a day care position in his firm. Sara rings true as a serious minded, worried single mother struggling to make end's meet on a daily crisis basis. Fans will feel for her dilemma as life has not been pleasant until E.J. enters, but he holds back so much of himself she wonders if men are fickle. This solid contemporary romance with a realistic portrayal of a working poor single parent besieged with just every day survival is both realistic and poignant.

Harriet Klausner