This was my first book by this author. Can't understand her popularity. The writing was flat, the plot uninspiring, and the characters one-dimensional or difficult to relate to.

The blurb starts "Jocelyn Minton is a woman torn between two worlds". I didn't get that impression. She pretty much turned her back on her father and her stepmother and stepsisters, and built her life around a snobbish old lady who clung to past glories of her once wealthy family.

I doubt the author intended it, but to me the old lady, Miss Edie, came accross as a real piece of work. Scheming, cruel, self satisfied, superior. In the fictional diary of her youth, she described herself as "the most beautiful woman in the world", and I expect she believed it.

I hated the way the beautiful stepsisters were portrayed as greedy airheads. Where does the notion come from that beauty makes a woman evil? Do authors have to say this in order to make plain women buy their books?

Finally, the love story was boring. Jocelyn inherits a stately home from Miss Edie and moves in, taking it for granted that she'll marry one of her handsome cousins. All she needs is to pick which of the two. And it's pretty obvious from the beginning that one is pushed at her but she'll go for the other.

I could not get a clear impression of Jocelyn. She behaves one way today, the opposite tomorrow. Timid, agressive, worried, happy, they all seem to alternate in some random sequence I couldn't fathom out.

I managed to finish the book by skimming bits, so two stars instead of one.