It's a generous one star from me. Not my sort of book but even so I wonder how it ever got published. The characters have no depth, they are either good or evil, so very stereotyped. I very much doubt if any research was done as none of it rang true. I was surprised to find that it was set in the 1890s, it could have been at least a century earlier. Would any self respecting Victorian have called their son Cain? I think they knew their bible better than the author. The author had a very irritating way of switching between characters in the narrative, this reader had to keep going back to understand what was going on; there was also a very annoying confusion over which character was being discussed lots of 'him' or 'her', I think it was a misguided attempt to inject a bit of mystery. It didn't work. Dreadful, just dreadful.
An interesting historically based story line set in a coal mining town in England. It highlights the poverty of those who worked in the coal mines owned by aristocrats and what the privileged could get away with. It also touches on white slavery and the sugar cane plantations of the Caribean. A very enjoyable audio book.
The title is extremely misleading. I thought that it would be an erotic romance or any kind of romance but no. I was liking it at the beginning...the heroine was tortured and character development was good and all that but after a while it became a drag. So, I simply skipped all the way to the end.