I usually enjoy this author's books and this displayed Carlyle's excellent writing. I enjoyed the story and was caught up in the character's plight. However this book was perhaps over-written. It was too descriptive and too long winded, at 421 pages, for a story that would have been better told in 300 pages. There was no mystery subplot, as there is in many of her books, so the story was about Mercer and Zoe untangling themselves from their complications to be together. I'm not sorry I read it and a Liz Carlyle book is better than so many others but it wasn't one of her best.