I’m a big fan and pre-order all of Ms. Stoker’s books. Unfortunately, this one was a huge disappointment. The two biggest shortfalls were that there were a couple of themes (He ignored me for 3 years and I’m sorry I ignored you for 3 years) that were repeated over and over and over and over again with slight changes in wording. There was little development of the actual story arc. The sense of tension and suspense usually so captivating in her books was almost completely lacking because of the sparse development of the challenges faced by the heroine. The story lacked the creativity that can broaden the story arc and deepen the sense of place and characters. Overall it looked like there was a broad general outline of the book, the key story arc scenes were quickly dashed off as tersely as possible, and page filler was added to fit the page target and meet a deadline. The result was no where near the quality of her usual work.