I think it might be a good idea for Ms. Roberts to stay the hell away from trilogies for a while and either take a long vacation or stick to her stand-alone novels. In my humble opinion, her best trilogy was the Sisters Island trilogy, and they've been going downhill ever since.
I didn't think much of the first book in this series, but the characters were okay. The second book was more of a stretch, and I finished it because I'd paid for it.
In this last book, however, the characters were unlikable and the romance was so forced as to be ludicrous. In my daughter's pithy phrase, it blew harder than a Force Five hurricane.
Nope. I really think that a moratorium on these trilogies is in order.