IF YOU FIND ME WORTHY By Pam Landen – Contemporary Romance, Women’s Fiction

If You Find Me Worthy introduces forty-six-year-old Kate Baker, a woman who knows her own mind. As the former owner of a million-dollar private jet charter service, Kate is well established in the world of aviation as well as the world of CEOs.

Having started her career in the technology field, Kate is returning to her roots when her friend and former business partner asks her to use her technical expertise to assess the disaster recovery plan of North American Bank. She negotiates to exchange her assistance for a look into the bank’s lending practices for her study on the prejudice against female business owners.

Kate is certainly not looking for love. Having lost her husband to ALS years previously, she is focused only on her work, her son Stuart, and golf. However, when she meets Curtis Michaels, the CEO of North American Bank for the last seven years, she immediately feels an unfamiliar, and unwelcome, attraction. So begins If you Find Me Worthy by Pam Landen.

Curtis finds Kate exceptionally intriguing. He can’t help but constantly challenge the beautiful blonde.

A widower himself, Curtis has raised his daughter Sarah alone and carries the scars of his former bad relationship. He knows he shouldn’t even think about approaching Kate since she is temporarily working for his bank, but he can’t help himself.

The more Kate learns about Curtis, the more she realizes their similarities in the business and personal worlds, but Curtis’s demons threaten their fledgling relationship before it has a chance to truly blossom. She questions her ability to maintain her distance from the man who so clearly needs her help, but will the two be able to defeat the memories of his former life?

This novel’s greatest strength is character development.

Both Kate and Curtis have extreme depth. The pain from their former spouses has created a pain simultaneously unique to the characters while bearing striking similarities. Kate’s husband, Sam, left Kate with extreme feelings of inadequacy despite her running a successful business and caring for him during his illness. Their story is one Kate is embarrassed to admit to Curtis.

Unbeknownst to Kate, Curtis has his own shameful secret concerning his dead wife Carol. His trauma is, perhaps, the most critical to the novel’s plot as it keeps him from seeking future happiness with Kate. Though perfect for each other, the two have a chasm of hurt between them. The strength Kate has found through therapy and self-actualization won’t allow her to settle for less than Curtis’s full heart, but finding the patience to help him get the counseling he needs proves difficult. Numerous times, their relationship stands on shaky ground, but the growth of their love is endearing.

A major theme of the novel revolves around Kate’s research project – the treatment of women in business.

Kate must repeatedly prove herself in this “man’s world.” She faces extreme sexism from Jake, the lead marketing representative for the bank. His constant berating, questioning, and name-calling push Kate to her limit, but she refuses to allow Curtis to step in on her behalf. With few women in positions of power within the bank, Kate’s journey is entirely uphill with Curtis often throwing roadblocks in her path as well to test her business acumen.

An interesting twist is Kate’s acceptance of Curtis’s behavior. She sees Curtis as a flirt rather than an opponent. Though Curtis has macho-man control issues, his treatment of Kate is chivalrous and giving. She willingly gives up power to him on occasion, and she seems mostly unbothered by that power release. His validation of her feminism makes her feel like a beautiful, treasured woman for the first time in her life, and, in some way, actually accentuates her feminine power.

Behind the details of business and technology lies a touching romance. Recommended!