The premise of this book was a good one. Willa wants to become a doctor, which is not something done at that time. Her father wants her to marry. Willa discovers a love note and wants to track down the intended recipient. While the premise is a good one, the book was a struggle for me. To be honest, I almost gave up about a third of the way into the book. It's not a bad book, or a bad story—it just moves s-o-o-o-o s-l-o-w-l-y. To be fair, I'm sure many readers would describe the book as beautiful and lyrical, but I'm not the reader for that sort of book. If you are, you will probably like this one very much.

For me, the book did pick up a bit right about a third of the way through, but it wasn't long before it stalled out again. And seeing the letter fall into so many different hands frustrated me—it was like watching game of 'telephone' work it's way around the room. Another issue for me was that, though the book moved slowly, making me feel like it was going on too long, I did get left at the end wondering what happened with some of the characters. I felt like other than the Willa storyline, many of the threads were left hanging, or the storyline was wrapped up very rapidly with no real development. I came to like some of these characters and would have liked to know what happened with them. I did finish the book, and I did like it ok—but it was just ok (for me).

I received an advanced copy of this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.