Oh dear.

So far I have loved every Julie Klassen book I've read, but was a definite exception. I just couldn't get into it and it was work to get through it. The plot is slow moving and most of the 'unexpected twists and turns' were most definitely expectable, if that's a word.

Alec was a difficult hero to get excited about. He's a shallow self centered gentleman dandy. I kept expecting this to change, but it never did to my liking. Julia is not much better, and quite frankly, I don't think I would have liked either one of them, even by the end of the book.

No one in the village is allowed to dance and why is kept a big secret (one of many secrets that are slowly revealed) until quite a ways into the book and when I finally found out why I felt it wasn't a big enough reason for such a huge edict. I felt like that with a lot of the book. Al lot of drama, for not enough reason.

I don't mind when a book switches back and forth between character points of view, but since I already found this book difficult at best it just served to further annoy me.

I did appreciate the obvious research the author did and the new tidbits I learned about the time period but in my opinion that was not enough reason to read this particular book. The rest of her books are wonderful. I highly recommend them all. Just not this one.

This book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available at your favourite bookseller from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group.