A wintery tale of romance and mystery, where not everything is always as it seems.

Granted, I gave this book only 2 stars, but I strongly believe that is more of a “me” issue than anything else. The romance between the two leads was fine, and while I felt the ending to be a bit rushed and chaotic, overall I didn’t have much issue with this book in terms of storytelling.

However. Much of the reason I disliked this book is because, like seems to happen often, more than one potential romantic partner is introduced and I prefer them to the one chosen by the author. I knew going in who the romantic male lead was - we even have his point of view written for us! It’s obvious - and yet, I found him to be rather bland and lacking. He’s a fine choice as a romantic lead, but not when you’ve given me the option for a mysterious man of unknown motives who treats the main character openly well and respected, and is a more dynamic and interesting character overall.

Antony Carlisle is a fine choice, in theory, but my issues with him mostly stem with the fact that he never - until the very end of this book - tells Lizzy how he feels, and allows her to be disrespected by those around him. He is from a dramatically different social circle than her, and yet doesn’t seem to realize how negatively his actions would affect her status - especially since she is a woman, unmarried, and running the shop attempting to make ends meet. Instead, he - rather abruptly - decides he cares for her, and yet both never indicates to her his feelings in any conceivable way, either lies or omits details from her that make it seem like he doesn’t care about her, and doesn’t seem to care that the way he is treating her would make the general public believe she is promiscuous. 

And while the other romantic lead is never really an option, I felt it a bit ridiculous how the author decided to make him not an option at all. I won’t spoil it, but the way that he was so violently removed from being a potential romantic partner was so shoe-horned in that it felt almost like it was included solely to force me to stop liking him more than the real romantic lead. 

I felt the middle of this novel kind of wavered a bit, where as soon as Lizzy meets Carlisle she spends all her time pining over him - despite him never really doing anything to deserve this. She has, up until this point, been the one keeping food on the table and caring for her mother, but the second a man shows up starts fantasizing about being taken care of and cannot focus on work. Okay, I guess. 

The mystery was also really quickly ended, and kind of poorly thought out. Really, once Lizzy finds out one single thing she is then given a letter that essentially solves everything for her, and then a bunch of really wild and unconnected things happen and now the book is over and everything is perfect. 

I do think this book could be a fun read for anyone not irritated that the objectively better choice of a male romantic lead was so violently shoved in the corner to make way for the most boring man in existence. Romance authors need to stop giving me options if they want me to like the man they’ve chosen for the main character, in my opinion. However, if - unlike me - you don’t generally choose the more dynamic and interesting character, I think you’ll like the romance enough to ignore the strange and abrupt way this book resolves its central mystery.