Ugh. The story is reasonably good – Kay Thorpe knows how to engage us with her characters – but this is another novel of a 35 year old man and a 17 year old girl. That’s just icky.
True, Dana truly loves Mark is determined to grow up and be the best wife she can be, but… The story runs about 4 months, a month before marriage and 3 months after, and it’s clear that the two have serious issues together. Their biggest problem is that Mark doesn’t think he should be in love with Dana, that he knows she is too young and he’s a bit ashamed of desiring her.
The problems escalate because Mark’s younger brother Brendon falls for Dana too, and bewildered by Mark’s attitude and lonely, Dana enjoys Brendon’s company. Brendon tries hard to steal Dana from Mark, at which point Mark virtually rapes Dana, then somehow seduces her immediately after. (Double yuck!)
Brendon brings in another complication with Marion, the girl both he and Mark had considered marrying. Marion acts decently – we don’t get any of the scenes with her acting seductive or proprietorial – but Dana now is convinced that Mark doesn’t love her and never will love her. And now she’s pregnant. Pregnant by the man who doesn’t want her for his wife.
Or so she thinks.
Most of the pair’s problems would have gone away if Dana had something to do besides sit around home, she’s even tired of reading. Brendon is no fool and takes solid advantage of her boredom and how useless she feels. And of course if Mark could ever bring himself to tell Dana how he really feels, but this is a Harlequin Presents so no hero ever says what he means.
Kay Thorpe writes well and creates believable characters, even those with a huge age discrepancy, and we can feel desolate and lonely and rejected along with Dana. A Man of Means is not one of Thorpe’s best but it is pretty good, quite enjoyable.
3 Stars
I got my copy from Thriftbooks, and at the moment Amazon has a copy of the paperback and the pdf version is here on Archive.org. I don’t see a Kindle version except of the comic book version.
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