Towards the end of this book, I was wondering how I'd describe it and the word "average" popped into my mind. In many ways this book is solid, it has everything it needs to have and is written well enough that I kept reading and was interested for most of the book. Yet, it never really touched me. To me, a really amazing book well suck me into the point that when I look up it takes me a minute to readjust to my surroundings and figure out where the heck I am. This book didn't do that. It didn't even come close. The entire read I was always completely aware that I was sitting there reading this off my ereader, that I should clean the surface of my ereader because it's gettin' a bit gross, and that my neck (or arm or leg) was in an uncomfortable position.

So "average" is the perfect description of this story. I have never quite categorized a book in this way before. It is well written in terms of mechanics, the plot was mildly interesting and the characters were enjoyable but I was always on the outside (in the cold) peering in through the window, instead of actually being a fly on the wall. Apparently, that small distinction makes a big difference for me.

Oddly, it appears that the two books in this series are in reverse order. I haven't read book 1 but I looked at the sneak peek at the back of this story. Book 1 is about the hero's sister and her love story, but in book 2 she is single and has just acquired the house that appears to play a large role in book 1. I don't know how I feel about this, I think if I had read book 1 first I might actually like the setup in the same way I liked the past scenes in the second Godfather movie. Seeing the past after seeing a bit of the present seems to carry more meaning then when you see them in their proper order. This is something to keep in mind if you want to read book 2, perhaps it will read differently if you read book 1 first.

I need to note that the male hero in this book is very much in the style of Vivian Arend. Her heroes, while being main characters, never seem to be the focal point like the heroine is. We see much more of the heroine's struggle and the story seems to revolve completely around her even when the perspective changes to the hero. I'm not saying that all Arend books are like this, just some (most?) and this book falls into that category.

At the end of the day, I'll still read Vivian Arend when she comes out with something that catches me eye. I won't be reading the first book in this series, and if there are other books in the series I doubt I will read them either So what does that say? I think it reiterates that this book was average, and suggest that I am much more interest in the above average reads.