This isn't painful to read or anything but it's too bland and forgettable to recommend. There are the bones of a strong plot here but Mallory's colorless writing left me largely unengaged. There just wasn't enough pizzazz to this. I didn't have a strong grasp on Gabriel and Marietta as characters, their coupling was one of the those "we're the protagonists of a romance novel, ergo we must be together" matches where the actual chemistry is pretty lacking. I never really got what they saw in each other.