Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My goodness. I can't believe the excellent reviews this book has received. I bought it, read it, and returned it for a full refund. The characters are awkward, the plot is awkward, the writing is awkward, the sex scenes are awkward, even the names of the characters are awkward (Ralph Truitt, Catherine Land, Antonio Moretti as the bastard "son"). The musings of the unsympathetic, boring and unimaginative characters seem to go on forever, and the story is just ridiculous. I kept waiting for the plot twist that never happened. If you actually care about not knowing what will happen in this predictable, implausible and downright silly book, don't read any further..... For starters, the characters are unlikeable stereotypes. Even the dead ones, like the mother, the sister, the wife...As for the live ones? (The caretakers? Stereotypes.) Well, you know exactly what Catherine's past is when she's sitting on the train. If her clothes weren't a dead giveaway, her thoughts about the appearance of her train car tell you everything you need to know. Truitt's incessant moping about sex is just as predictable and boring. It's not even pathetically sad. It's just boring. So, the two main characters' respective tragic pasts are not exactly exciting, or even remotely interesting. As for the plot: Again, when it isn't completely predictable, it's implausible. The writer virtually copies a scene right out of Jane Eyre, so that Catherine can ingratiate herself with Truitt shortly after they meet. The sister dies a Dickensian death. The attempt to make Truitt and Catherine's meeting less of an accident is so contrived as to be absurd. The near and actual deaths - equally predictable and contrived. Why wouldn't the wealthy Truitt hire private investigators to check her out before he sends for her, just as he hired PI's to find his long-lost "son"? Why would he send his new young wife to town to fetch Antonio? Why wouldn't Antonio just go take all Truitt's money and leave, instead of going through the trouble to set Catherine up to poison Truitt? How did they even know Truitt would select her as the mail-order bride to get the whole poisoning scheme in place? Why would Truitt know that she's poisoning him and just shrug it off - it's okay, just don't let me suffer, dear, while you're killing me? And the chase scene at the end, where Antonio ends up on the ice? Gee, I wonder what's going to happen to him? The list of absurdities goes on and on. I was up all night reading this book, waiting for something interesting to happen, waiting to actually care about somebody - anybody - in the story. What an unfulfilling reading experience this was. At least I got my money back.