THE MAN PLAN - Tracy Anne Warren
The Grayson Series , Book 2
Signet
ISBN-10: 0-4514-6614-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-4514-6614-3
August 2014
Contemporary Fiction

New York - The Present

Madelyn Grayson left super-wealthy financier James Jordan at the alter five years ago. As James left the church, Madelyn's fifteen-year-old sister, Ivy, told James how much she loved him, and always had and always would. He dismissed her confession as an adolescent crush.

Ivy Grayson at twenty decides to quit college before her last year and go to New York City to become an artist. Her well-to-do parents, still friends with James, ask him to find their daughter a safe place to live. Her current plans are to room with three guys she knows in a neighborhood lacking a good reputation. They are worried for her safety. James has one, an apartment right in the upscale building he owns. His own apartment is on the top two stories, pool included. What he doesn't know is that Ivy has a plan to make him fall in love with her, despite his on-going relationship with another woman. The grownup Ivy entices James, but he feels the age difference (fifteen years), and having known Ivy since she was in diapers makes any relationship, other than brother-sister type friends, impossible. Even if they overcome the problems, how will the Grayson family react?

This story will test reader's ambivalence about the situation as much as it does James, except perhaps for those in Ivy's age range. At first, Ivy seems very immature. She is from a rich family and somewhat spoiled and certainly used to getting her own way, but kind, caring, willing to work, and a smart young woman. It is only when things don't turn out as she wants and she leaves the expensive but free-to-her apartment to live with her friends that she actually matures after enduring some of the difficulties of life; then the situation evolves. Even James makes some major blunders along the way, adding to the uncertainty.

Author Tracy Anne Warren has deftly created a story with some moral haziness and characters wiggling through the murky circumstances. It is interesting, well written, and will force readers to make their own assessment about the story's situation.

Robin Lee