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Oh wow...I don't normally give bad reviews, because I know how hard authors work on their stories, but although I read through this book to the end, I have mixed feelings about several things. I'll start with positives...The author is a good writer. The book is chock full of great one liners and funny scenes. The baddies in the book are so bad they are almost laughable, and I think that's what she was going for. The writing is very descriptive and informative. Not sure what the actual year it was supposed to be in, but I'm guessing late 1800's, and life back then was depicted well. I noticed she had several quite unattractive characters in her book and she seemed to showcase them, as if they reveled in their unattractiveness, lol. There were several quite satisfying scenes of the couple playing together and laughing, teasing, etc., when he was 'romancing' her. I enjoyed those. The book doesn't have a lot of profanity either, and I was very glad of that.Now as to the other...When I read the blurb, I really thought Jedwin (lol that's a point to ponder, his name. I kept waiting for his mother or someone to explain how the shortened version of his name came about (from James Edwin), but they never did). Anyway, I thought that Jedwin's lust for Cora and her wanting to slap his face would then play out as she's a good woman, despite what the town thinks, and he falls in love with her and they eventually marry. This does happen, but...the author weaves her own brand of spiritual 'truths' into the story, and they are very confusing. I came away with the impression that the author doesn't think fornication is a sin - sometimes - it depends on the couple. The sex was quite descriptive, and yet the author specifically stayed away from certain words for body parts, so that made it toned down a little. The first time Cora invited him up to her room, I must say I was a bit surprised and disappointed.I noticed that the preacher and his wife were depicted as harsh, judgmental, and uncaring - until a weird thing made the reverend switch gears and change in mid stream, lol. But the negative connotations about God and preachers made me grit my teeth. I gather that the author is holding a grudge against Christians in her past that have hurt or insulted her and she strikes out using her books. With the volume of descriptive words, it seemed that she was trying to convert the reader to her spiritual bent...There are quite graphic descriptions of embalming methods in the book and I had to skim over them as they were making me feel quite uncomfortable.I was very surprised that this novel, published by a publisher and not an indie, used methods that are 'against the rules'. Head hopping back and forth between many different people, was sometimes hard to follow.But the biggest pet peeve for me was the lack of scene breaks! There are NONE. The story goes along, the scene unfolding, and then the next sentence, with no warning, takes you somewhere else with a different character - WHAM. Many times I had to stop and reorient myself and say - 'Oh, this is a different scene now...let me go back and read that last sentence again." It was aggravating. For me, the final sentences in the scenes would have been much more powerful if there had been scene break indicators used. This would be an easy fix in the ebook - heck, just a few +++++ and a return before and after would take care of it. But it didn't seem the author cared that the breaks would be confusing.?Anyway, the ending was quite clever, written as a newspaper article. Again I say, I hated giving less than a 5 star, but anyway, these are my thoughts.