I was delighted, riveted and fascinated with this wonderful story and its lovely characters. Elaine Davenport and Emmett Mercier meet in St John, a boarding school in New York for the uber rich and entitled. Except, Lainey is not one of the entitled kids, she’s meek and retiring and wanders around like a ghost, earning her the nickname. For Emmett, she’s very intriguing with her black hair and very light green eyes.
When they met, she was thirteen and he was eighteen, about to graduate high school. She had a crush on him and yet, whenever they happened to talk, he felt seen, like she understood him and what he was feeling. They had one afternoon in the library where they shared secrets and love for favorite books. It ended in disaster when she was humiliated in public for having his photo under her pillow.
Fast forward ten years, Emmett is a powerful man, carefully guided by his father to be his successor in their huge conglomerate. He’s bigger and meaner and more handsome than ever. Lainey is beautiful and as shy as always, except with him. In an accidental encounter in the art gallery where she works, he’s entranced again but she rebuffs him.
Lainey is very passive, very accepting. She does all that her grandmother dictates, dresses as dictated, goes to the social activities acceptable to her grandmother. Her only fun is working part time at the Morgan Gallery where she can express her love for art. She’s a beautiful soul imprisoned in a gilded cage, dominated by the stern love from grandmother.
I was so full of love and compassion for Lainey, desperate for Emmett to take a stance, and for both to achieve some liberty to do their thing, irrespective of the excessive expectations of their families. I hurt for their loneliness, for their pain, for Emmett who has never received love and for Lainey who lives a chained life. I wanted to shake Lainey and make her wake up to life, not live that strange life that was not life. It’s like a battle of wills and the contestants are Lainey, Emmett, his father and her grandmother. I loved the psychology and the twists that they take in defending their stance, protecting their heart and their liberty. In the end, they needed to understand that their liberty laid in accepting the love they had for each other. Truly beautiful!
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About the author
R.S. Grey is the USA Today bestselling author of over twenty novels. She lives in Texas with her husband and daughter, and can be found reading, binge-watching reality TV, or practicing yoga! Visit her at rsgrey.com
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