Review: Where's the ending?
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 13, 2013
I was enjoying this book to the point that I couldn't put it down.  I had to know what happened next! (Although, I do agree with another reviewer that there was more animal death than I could handle - that was depressing). I felt for this hero and began to like him. And, although annoying in some ways, the heroine did seem to go well with our hero.But the ending of the book was......not there. I think this author needs to get another editor or something - the one she has must be rushing her to finish her books too quickly. This is the second book in which I've gotten the feeling that someone was making the author hurry to wrap things up such that she didn't get to write a proper ending. We had a really great, nicely fleshed out story that came to a very abrupt end.SPOILER ALERT: He's called the heroine by his late wife's name as they make love. Yet, two pages before the end, the heroine (despite being very upset by this when it happened) suddenly has an "oh well!" attitude about it. After it happened, she wrote him a letter saying that he really is more like a brother to her.  That's pretty major, and can't just be dismissed as easily as it was in the book.  A "quickie" in the carriage on the way to Bath and BAM. The book ends. Wait! That's it?! There needs to be some kind of heart-touching reconciliation between them. When does she retract the "you are more like my brother to me" statement?  When does he act horrified that he's called her Diana and swear it was a mistake that he regrets more than anything?  Where is the heart-tugging "I love you so very much" between them?  The sex in the carriage just didn't really accomplish that, I'm afraid.We don't get any closure to the villian's part in the story. The children are left at home - we never hear from them again. And, one of the most important questions of all never gets answered - did Sally have a baby and show George that its ok for her to get pregnant; he's not going to lose her?So many things left hanging at the end. I felt.....let down. I'd been reading a good book that I was enjoying only to have it just fall off a cliff at the end. Until the last 2 pages, this book was a 4 or 5. The ending dropped it.Edited to add the following (still possible spoilers):  It occurred to me after writing this review that there are some unanswered questions from the rest of the book as well.  For instance, George kisses Sally and can tell that she's been kissed before and knows how to kiss with passion.  I got the feeling that, at some point, we were going to learn the answer to this.  But we never did.We have a steward that seems very flirtatious with Sally...and then that plotline is dropped.  There was never a "hey, get away from my wife" discussion with him or even any more development of that story line (I didn't want him to have an affair with Sally, by any means.  But why introduce that line into the story if it's not a part of the story later?).The sheep were slaughtered, and George's livelihood was in jeopardy.  Did he rebuild?  I realize that the town and the other family members were going to help him out, but the sheep aspect was too large of a part of the plot to just drop with a "oh, yeah - some people donated some more sheep to him" resolution.Miss Johnson was going to do "one more thing" to George.  WHAT?!  We never found out what the final act was to be!  I wanted to know!The more I think about this book, the more questions I realize were never resolved.  Again, I really wonder if the author were, somehow, rushed to finish her book before she was ready to.  Something didn't work right in the publishing of this one, and it's confusing to the reader.