"Judith is a successful novelist from a good family, even if that family favors her more beautiful sister. Her desperate yearning for romance appears close to satisfaction when she meets Gavin, a handsome and charming baron, at a wedding on the Cornish coast. His love transforms her from a plain, lonely girl into a beautiful, glamorous woman overnight. But soon her perfect marriage begins to fall apart, and she finds herself trapped in a nightmare. As Judith battles both internal and external demons, including sexual ambivalence, psychological self-torture, gaslighting, family neglect, alcoholism, and domestic abuse, she becomes more and more addicted to her wild beast of a husband, and more and more determined to tame him. The book poses the question: "Why do women stay with bad men?""--