4.5/5 stars, rounded up. This book is historical romance, FYI, so keep that in mind if you want to read it, you have to enjoy romance. While I typically don't read romance, (though I love historical fiction) I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters are overall believable, engaging, and you want them to succeed, which is really important for any story. I liked that the book was never preachy, the story was not lost in the message which I find common in a lot of traditionally published books in the US these days.

The romance definitely gets hot and heavy at parts and there is quite a bit of sex between many different folks. So if that's not your thing I wouldn't recommend reading it. Towards the later parts of the books there was a bit of contrived drama, which always loses me a little, but overall I really enjoyed this author's work and am thinking about picking up the rest of her stuff at some point here.