CluckingBell

Well, that was a huge improvement over The Iron Duke. The first chapter or two dragged brutally owing to the insertion of exposition after every single line of dialogue or present-day action (and there was a little of that at the end, too, with clunky recapping of stuff that happened elsewhere, though the plot relied far less on that here than in The Iron Duke), but then the obligatory world-building-for-newbs became less intense and you were left with two sincere people falling in like with each other.

Annika is delightfully uncensored in expressing her thoughts and feelings, and there are some interesting undercurrents concerning the ways families and tight-knit communities, and of course society as a whole, choose to define (and confine) individuals. --vague spoiler ahead-- David is a deeply good person (although there's one point where he doesn't show much imagination when he has a moral decision to make, but he kind of gets a pass because later he alludes to that moment and how you wake up one day with a better idea about how to handle a situation, but by then it's too late, and you know he's haunted by his actions, and you know he was tired and desperate when he made that questionable decision, and then you only feel sympathy for him) who is dealing with some deep-seated issues caused more by how society as a whole perceives and reacts to him than any physical injury he has sustained.

This isn't entirely four-star writing, but Brook has such interesting ideas at the root of her stories and this was definitely a four-star romance (with distractingly inaccurate cover art—put a brown paper bag over it or read the ebook!).