I thought the cover was cute, gave me the feeling that I was headed into small town life for a while, but then when I started reading, it felt really scattered and inconsistent. Even in the prologue, the second paragraph had a different tense than the first one - if the character was thinking it real time, it wasn't clear. Next I'm introduced to a character whose narrative is filled with so many sentence fragments and sad-sack cliches I felt rather beat down - I got it, no one loves this guy and he's all alone in the world and no place feels like home, but it was driven in over and over, as if it was important to tell me every detail about someone who would soon disappear so that when he showed up again I'd feel instinctively feel pity before I remembered who he was. I jumped to another new character and his entire backstory before the one in the prologue showed up again, and every chapter and character was so full of exposition that I felt nothing was moving along fast enough to want me to keep reading more. Most of all, I couldn't figure out how this main female character thought of herself as strong and independent when she was full of doubt and seemingly either scared, overpowered or cowed by every man around her ... she was inconsistent and unlikable for me. I could see how this might appeal to romance lovers who want just a tease of a mystery, but it didn't work for me.