While Ruthie Knox is one of my favorite writers of contemporary romance (her books work wonderfully in the university course I teach on romance, as they raise issues of power, identity, and gender stereotypes), this series novel was not one of my favorites. At her best, Ashley, the novel's heroine, is an insecure, damaged young woman who is desperate for love; at her worst, she's a manipulative, impulsive, thoughtless and sometimes abuse chaos-machine. Roman, the Cuban developer with his own deep insecurities and problems, somehow falls in love with her. The angst is almost too painful to watch, and the likelihood of these two making it in the long haul is never quite believable.