“Proven Love” by Mary Manners

Megann Reilly is a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, who’s returned home to Wildwood, Tennessee for the summer to care for her ailing mother. She hasn’t been home in 10 years; she couldn’t get away fast enough from her mother who was addicted to both alcohol and men. The family had been abandoned by her father, who later committed suicide when she was still a child. Megann definitely grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

Colton Kendrick grew up on the right side of the tracks, son of the wealthiest family in town and always part of the in-crowd in high school. Having experienced a near-fatal car accident that left his best friend crippled, the death of his sister from leukemia, and the responsibilities of raising his now five-year-old niece. Colton is a very different person from the shallow party buy Megann knew in high school and secretly had a crush on. 

Mary Manners

Colton’s now the youth minister at Wildwood Community Church, where Megann ends up as an administrative assistant to provide some family income. The two are attracted to each other, but there are issues buried in their pasts, and in their families’ pasts, that threaten to undo any kind of relationship. And only gradually will Colton and Megann find out what those are.

Proven Love by Mary Manners is one of 20 books in the The Potter’s House series, short Christian romance novels written by various authors. Manners is the author of several books in the series as well as several of her own independent Christian romance novels. She lives in Tennessee.

The novel is not serious literature, but then it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s easy reading, a simple romance, with an expected ending, but containing a few surprises along the way.