A friend sent me this book in a box of books. I'm not sure if she read it or not. I don't recognize the author so my guess is that this is the first of her books that I've read. I've also not read the first two books in this series and don't plan to seek them out.

The minuses far outweigh the pluses in this book for me.

The pluses:
*Serenity House sounds like it does good work for teenage girls (though there is a mention in this book that it is being investigated due to a series of problems with residents and a mix up in supervision) and it sounds like the boys's house Quiet Waters will be similar.
*The dogs (who are a very small part of the story).

The minuses:
*If Nathan truly wanted to leave his wife and be with Annabelle, the correct way to go about it would have been to divorce Olivia before sleeping with Annabelle--before making Annabelle promises that he then found he couldn't keep.
*There's a lot of sexual relations outside of marriage: Annabelle and Nathan (both in the past and the current timelines), Barbara and Nathan, Jon and his ex-girlfriend.
*I didn't find some of Annabelle's choice believable. Certainly she can't be the only female who could be a bodyguard or the only person who could "fit in" unobtrusively. Yes, it might have taken a short while to find someone suitable, and I could see Annabelle perhaps standing in until that happened, but agreeing to it long term . . .
*Rob--exactly how did Annabelle discourage him? When he left to return to Seattle, he was claiming when she returned they'd take up where they'd left off before she left Seattle. Yet, when she returns to Seattle, we don't hear anything more about him or how she convinced him their relationship was over. ( )