Well. Not as good as To Have and to Hold or Wild at Heart, but not as cringe inducing as Crooked Hearts. Actually, Crooked Hearts was going extremely well until she hit that whole Chinese thing. I mean really... what was going on in her head?
Some spoilers below for the book:
Interesting beginning, with a socially-conscious hero and an upper-class heroine, and I enjoyed how Gaffney didn't make Connor's desire for social change for the miners anachronistic. I also very much appreciated how for once, the guy was PC while the girl had backward notions. Plus, props for having Sophie be a believable product of the times instead of fudging around the issues of class and the consequences of being welathy like many romance writers do. I liked much of the book, from having Sophie's unforeseen pregnancy be a panic issue for her, like it shoudl have been, instead of seeming like a plot point to get her back with Connor. I also like how Sophie and Connor argue and how they're both too stubborn to back down from things they don't mean, because it reminds me of me. And it's not a Big Misunderstanding just for the sake of having one (although that happens earlier on in the book). It's a more realistic portrayal of a relationship than in many romances, just because the couple does get into dumb arguments for dumb reasons, over hot button issues for the both of them.
The point where I felt the book starting going wrong was after Sophie's miscarriage and her subsequent depression. While her depression felt very real to me, I was a bit irked when Gaffney just had her suddenly recover for a reason I can't even remember and go forth to protest her husband's decency. Huh, that probably was the reason ;). I also felt a slight grudge against Connor for leaving her while she was in the middle of a deep depression. Just... no! The pacing also felt a bit off -- the shifts from them getting accustomed to being married and getting to know each other (through arguments and sex and just doing things together) to the drama of the miscarriage and depression to the lighting fast recovery at the end. Was almost as though Gaffney had another fifty some pages to fill and didn't quite know what to put in, and so manufactured the drama.
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