This review can also be found on my blog.

My first read by Diana Fraser, and I definitely want more. This story easily swept me off my feet and tumbled me around a little before setting me down gently. Exotic locations, exotic characters, love, revenge, secrets, and heartache all come together perfectly to create an emotional yet romantic tale.

When we first meet Anna, we see her as a frantic mother trying to get her son back from her brother-in-law, Zahir. When they come face to face, their chemistry is sizzling, with an underlying current of anger and hatred. The story moves swiftly to divulge a few secrets as the plot unfolds little by little, and with each new revelation, I began to see the characters differently. They were constantly changing. Anna could have easily come across as selfish or deceitful, but it turns out she was trying to keep the peace and save her dead husband’s family, particularly his brother, from a shameful truth. Even when she was faced with Zahir’s proposition to agree to a marriage just so that she could continue to see her son, she put her son first. Her feelings and her yearning to be free were put on the back burner.

Zahir was a hero one would love to hate, but he was dark, seductive, charming – he was intoxicating. He didn’t have all the facts, not about Anna or her marriage, so his actions were fueled by anger and revenge. I loved them as a couple because as time went on, they discovered things about themselves as well as each other. Despite not knowing the whole truth, Zahir made huge strides in becoming a different person, to the point of loving Anna and wanting her for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones. Once they ceased to pass judgement on each other, their feelings really blossomed.

The emotional turmoil came when Zahir tried to make her dreams come true and give her what she wanted the most – to be free. Not necessarily to be free of him, but to do the things she always wanted to do before getting married and pregnant. But then the truth eventually surfaced and threatened to tear them apart for good. Misunderstandings on both sides and the failure to communicate with each other had me in tears until one of them was brave enough to lay everything on the line for a HEA.

This author’s writing is lush, sensual, and flowing. There was never a moment of boredom with this story. I couldn’t stop flipping the pages, wanting, no, desperate to know more. There were some memorable moments that stood out to me, for instance when Anna watches Zahir with his falcon and has an epiphany, or when Zahir realized that he loved her enough to let her spread her wings and fly.

He felt his light dim. Perhaps he would never be enough for her to wipe out her past, to believe that they had everything together, that she didn’t need to keep on looking for that elusive something that led her on and on to the goal of freedom.

Their conversation at the end was one of the loveliest I’ve read in a long time. Speaking in metaphors, they finally came to an understanding.

If you’re a hopeless romantic like myself, you will want to pick up this book. ( )