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I can't believe this book ever made it out of the reject pile. I would have rejected it halfway through the first page. In the first place, this author cannot write. Her style is clunky, overblown, full of purple prose and, incredibly, grammatical errors. She has no idea how to punctuate dialogue without speech tags. The speech tags she uses are also amateurish, attention-grabbing, distracting from the book.

So, while I was finding it incredibly hard to get drawn into the book because of the author's style, I then found further distractions from the story in the shape of the author's obvious lack of knowledge of Victorian England, and of aristocratic England generally. The dialogue, for example, is far too contemporary, and far too American. "I guess" is both: it was barely used in the UK until towards the end of the twentieth century, and this is just one example of vocabulary which is completely anachronistic.

Titles are used incorrectly throughout. If Rand is the Marquess of Ashford, he is Lord ASHFORD, not Lord Templeton. Templeton is simply his family name. Jessica is referred to interchangeably as Lady Curtis, Lady Jessica and Miss Curtis. Absolutely wrong. She can only be one of these people. As she's unmarried, she can't be Lady Curtis - that would be the wife of Lord Curtis. We're never told what her father's title was. If he was an earl, a marquess or a duke, then she is Lady Jessica. Otherwise, she is Miss Curtis. Make up your mind, Power! Finally, there is a difference between the title of Lord Hamilton Emery and Lord Emery. The former is the younger son of a duke or marquess; the latter is a peer in his own right. Again, make up your mind!

There is far, far too much informality in the book. This is Victorian England! That was an era where husbands and wives addressed each other formally: as Mr and Mrs, or by their titles. The very first scene, where Jessica and Rand (hardly a Victorian man's name) meet for the first time in three years, and where they hardly know each other, their use of first names is completely incongruous and unbelievable. Even Rand's calling the pupils at the school by their first names is wrong.

Speaking of the school, I've never encountered a headmistress with so little sense of responsibility. No other teachers are mentioned; we hear only about a (highly indiscreet) butler and a housekeeper. So exactly who is looking after the pupils when Jessica is running off to see Rand, or rushing to London with one of the spoiled brats, or abandoning her pupils in the village because that same spoiled brat threw a tantrum? This is *Victorian England*. Young ladies - yes, even children of 12 - would never be out in public unescorted, and would not be left alone once they were out in public.

The story itself simply bored me to tears. Any element of romantic/sexual tension between the main characters was gone by about the second chapter. It was then simply tedious waiting for them to get on with it. The head injury sub-plot held no interest for me whatsoever, except to keep me wondering how much of this - especially the psychobabble - was genuinely credible for Victorian England. As for the characters, I wanted to tell Jessica to grow up and stop being so childishly obsessional (no wonder she indulged the spoiled brat), and Rand was absolutely unbelievable. No man - Victorian or contemporary - would talk in the flowery way he did, or be such a doormat. He was completely unbelievable as a character, and I could have no respect for him whatsoever. Nothing to like about any of these characters.

This is one of the worst books I've had the misfortune to read in a very long time, and it's going straight into the recycling pile.

Rand was a perfect man; completely attentive to Jess's needs and he was so in love with her you just knew that he would do anything to please her. The author did a good job of keeping him manly rather than foppish.
This book was about two things: neurological problems and sex. It read like a textbook with a few (graphic) love scenes thrown in just to remind the reader that this was a love story. The tragic problems of Amanda and others notwithstanding, this is certainly a memorable book, but not one of this author's better works.