Esme Crabb has spent a lifetime in the mountains trying to stir up good gravy from watery “poor-do”. And she’s had no help from her ne’er-do-well father or silly sisters. The family lives rough and gets by beholden to their neighbors. Esme was hoping the twins could marry well, but like everything that needs doing in her family, it seems she has to do it herself. 

The news spread like brush fire through the whole county when widower Ancil Drayton announced his intention to start courting Miss Hattie Colfax. She was certainly spirited and delightfully sweet natured, and she'd managed to run her family farm almost single-handedly. But wasn't a twenty-nine-year-old lady farmer too old to catch a husband?

An Irresistable Suitor.

All his life handsome, black-haired Reed Tyler had worked Miss Hattie's farm--and dreamed of one day settling down on his own piece of land with the pretty young woman he'd sworn to marry. Hattie was someone he could tell his hopes and troubles to--someone he looked on as a sister. So he thought, until the idea of Ancil Drayton calling on her made him seethe. Until the night a brotherly peck became a scorching kiss... and Reed knew nothing would bank the blaze--and that his best friend was the only woman he would ever love.

My review contains spoilers and they're mostly my thoughts...

I have waited to pick up another Pamela Morsi book for at least 4 yrs. There is a reason behind it but I am not here to discuss that. Recently I decided I need to give her older romance a try once again. Last week I finished “Sealed with a Kiss”, which didn’t really live up to my expectations. But I had already bought a few books by her so I picked up Courting Miss Hattie instead. The blurb intrigued me, so did the ratings. And I have to say that it was better than I thought it would be. I’m also quite fond of older woman-younger man theme, so that was a boon in this story. Surprised me really, because I didn’t know it prior to starting the book.

Courting Miss Hattie is set at the turn of the century. Hattie Colfax was but a child when her father passed away leaving her with her frail, difficult-to-be-with mother. But that didn’t mean Hattie didn’t love them both. Being an only child, she took care of her until she also passed on. After that, Hattie has been pretty much alone, taking care of their farmland all by herself. But she also had a helper. Reed Tyler came to them when he was but barely a boy, recruited by her father. 5 yrs younger than Hattie, Reed took to the training soon. While Hattie only had 2 other members in her family, Reed’s family was very big with 8/9 brothers and sisters. He was somewhere in the middle so the training at an early age did him good. Every bit of financial contribution mattered. Besides Reed’s father liked Hattie’s and was happy to have him work for the old Mr. Colfax.

It's been long 4 yrs. since I read a Pamela Morsi book. The last one (Runabout) was SO BAD that I had to stop for a while to scrape if off my memory. Unfortunately, Sealed with a Kiss was a bummer too. Wish I could say I loved it but I can't. I liked the story in parts, all the small-town shenanigans, but I cared neither for the hero, nor for the heroine. Both were equally stubborn, and in parts, silly. I was more interested in the ill-fated romance between the hero's father and the heroine's spinster aunt. Since that didn't end well there will be no full review. *sigh*

This is a prime example of the effect of a cover on readers - I requested the audio version of this book through Audiobook Boom, having seen the cover showing a bicycle leaned up against a rustic wooden fence. After listening to the book I registered it on BookLikes, only to discover a pink cover with a couple encircled by flowers. I realised that if I'd been originally presented with the pink cover I wouldn't even have read the book content before passing it by. As it was, it took me a while to get into the book, as I'm not much of a Romance reader, but it was the sense of humour running through the narrative that kept me reading.

Jedwin Sparrow has decided he needs to spread some wild oats before thinking about marriage, and he reckons the best place to start is the local divorcee, Cora Briggs. She is horrified and prepares to send him packing, except for the temptation of taking revenge on the tittle-tattling ladies of the town, led by his mother. 
Set in Oklahoma in 1906, there were serious implications with being involved with a divorcee; the community was fiercely judgmental and the poor young woman was labelled and blamed through no fault of her own.
Cora Briggs and Jedwin Sparrow were immediately likable characters, along with the rather plain daughter of the local vicar, Tulsa May Bruder, who I see becomes one of the main characters of the sequel, Runabout, which takes place ten years later.

The reading by Stevie Puckett was a bit drawn out and some of the women's voices rather shrill, but once I got involved with the story I became accustomed to this. I certainly had no problem with the clarity or consistency of her narration and I will keep an eye open in case she narrates the sequel.