There was a lot more telling than showing in this book. The heroine was a doormat. She is a city girl who gives up her ballet career to marry a man and live in a forest. There is a village close by but she is too much of a wimp to get out and find herself some friends or something to do. She spends her time cleaning house and growing a garden and sulking. She gets pregnant and her husband ignores her and doesn't share a bed or have sex with her or even look at her. Somehow he doesn't get that he is making her feel ugly and unloved and that he only liked her for her hot body. He thinks he's doing it to not hurt her delicate self with his passion. But she's a dancer, I don't buy that she was delicate. I don't think you get far in ballet being a weinie. Also evidently her doctor told him that she was too tiny and had to take it easy. But she didn't tell her actual patient. I don't buy it. She was a size 8, about 5'2" and about 125 lbs in good health with good muscle tone. Seems like she'd be pretty set for an easy pregnancy if her husband wasn't making her feel like a troll.

He was just an ass through the whole thing and treated her like crap. He doesn't respect her at all, thinks she's childish and dismisses her concerns. And he never really gets better or apologizes much at all. He even went so far as to help his best friend's wife plan a party for her husband and didn't tell the heroine about it or invite her because she was too delicate at 8 months pregnant to go to a party. In fact he lied and told her he was going to York on a business trip. If my husband had tried that with me when I was pregnant, he'd have regretted it and he'd still be regretting it today 10 years later. Even though I might not have landed a skillet upside his head, I'd sure never let him forget his stupidity.

Then she runs away and ends up in a crash and staying with strangers. The hero finds her there and she promptly goes into labor. She has the baby then doesn't seem to mind when for the next 30 pages some strange lady keeps taking the baby into another room only bringing her to her mother for feeding. Most women are a bit more excited about their babies than that. But maybe she didn't want the kid, she spent so much time whining about being pregnant and none at all being excited. The author threw in one sentence at the end “Of course I wanted the baby!” But she sure didn't show that in any way during the course of the book. If the author had wanted to write that non motherly character she should have just stuck with it. Not only that but about 20 minutes after she delivers, she is fantasizing about getting in the hero's pants. Now I am a baby person and I can tell you that is a total fantasy. It was A LOT longer than 20 minutes before I was interested in anything having to do with my husband's naughty bits after my boys were born. ( )