Caro Oresteia was born into a family of Rivermen who sail Wherries carrying cargo around the Riverlands. Unfortunately, not all of the cargo is safe and when Caro's father is arrested, she must take a mysterious box to Valonikos to buy his freedom. 
 This was, in theory, a perfectly reasonable read about a young woman's coming of age during her adventures on the river. To be honest though, there was far too much description of boats and how to sail them (which I freely admit to have glossed over a lot of the time) and not enough about the relationships between any characters but that of Caro and Markos who were, again, perfectly reasonable characters but spent a lot of time misunderstanding each other and/or pining for each other before meeting up and falling out again. 
 This is the first in a series apparently; to be honest it could have had another book's worth of action and lost a lot of the unnecessary parts. I suggest a good editor could make it something a lot better than it turned out to be!