Marriage by Necessity    by Marisa Carroll Order:  USA  Can Harlequin, 2005 (2005) Paperback     Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton In Marriage by Necessity, Sarah returns to her ex-husband's hometown of Cottonwood Lake, Michigan to ask him to do her a big favor. After she and Nate split up, Sarah remarried, the result being a three-year-old son, Matthew. Sarah's husband was killed in an accident before Matthew was born, and she has been raising their son on her own. Sarah was recently told she is dying, and does not have much time left. She asks her first husband Nate to marry her again so that her son will have a father and family to take care of him when she is gone. While at first I didn't warm to this premise, I enjoyed the characters who inhabited the story - family members like the lovable curmudgeon of a grandfather, Harmon 'Harm' Riley, and Nate's cute niece Becca become part of Sarah's new life, as she and Matty move in with Nate while she recovers from surgery. And no, she does not die. She never planned to live past her surgery. She assumed she would die, and re-married Nate for her son's sake. Now she's on the road to recovery, she wants their sham of a marriage annulled before Matty gets attached to his new family, and she's afraid that her heart will break again if she falls in love with Nate. Though I found Sarah herself immature, the other interesting characters made up for it. The author(s) (Marisa Carroll is the pen name for writing team Carol Wagner and Marian Franz) did a good job of creating three dimensional individuals, helping pull the reader into the story. Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons. Find more Romance books on our Shelves or in our book Reviews