When I looked at the cover for this book, it sounded so lyrical and beautiful, I grabbed it. It was quite disappointing, however. I found the prose style quite irritating - it read as if the author was in the middle of a creative writing course. It starts off with lots of description so you're frustrated by lack of characterisation and then stumbles around from one character's viewpoint to another so it's hard to get engrossed. Eventually, I grew to enjoy the characters and the story - it was the author's style that I found rather a strain. It made me realise just how brilliant Cathy Kelly is, for example, with 'Someone Like you; - she deals with lots of characters and slips smoothly from one to another, gracefully weaving them together in an apparently effortless way. Definitely Kelly is to be preferred.