But her resolution shatters when the tragic lovers in a painting—the subject of her first history class at Oxford—begin to haunt her. The lovers warn her against their own nemesis, a Puritan from the English Civil War.

College becomes more complicated when she falls hard for Rupert Vance, a troubled aristocrat and descendant of one of the characters in the painting.

With the spirit of a murderer after her, Madison comes to realize that her own first love may be doomed…

Before I go into any detail reviewing this book, I want to say = first and foremost – I liked the book.   A good bit, actually. \I read this book because one of our former reviewers signed up for this book on the book tour and then had to back out.  Not wanting to disappoint Goddess Fish I took on the book and read it myself.   I’m glad I did.  I enjoyed the story.

I will be completely honest and say this was one of the oddest books I’ve read in a long time.   Which makes me at two for two with the last books I’ve read being fairly odd.  This one right after Gone Girl – I’m ready for some boring literature.  Ha!

At any rate, odd is not always a bad thing and that is the case with this book.  When I started it, I expected it to be a typical jumping across centuries type of book, a la The Forgotten Garden.  It ended up being more convoluted and twisted than that and I enjoyed it.

There were only two drawbacks and really only one of them bothered me.  The main character, Madison, is a Southern girl.  Louisiana Bayou country.  Not a bad thing in and of itself, but the Southern colloquialisms got to be a bit much after awhile.  At one point I may have said out loud, “She’s Southern, I get it!!”  But on the whole, while this bothered me, it didn’t happen enough to taint the book.

The only other drawback was that I figured out the ending about two-thirds of the way through.   So the “OMG!!!” factor wasn’t there for me.  In all honesty, that didn’t take away from the book either.

All in all, I’d say a VERY promising start for this author’s first published novel.  I give it 3 and 3/4 out of 5 bloody picture frames.