When 19-year-old student Emma Tarrant meets Dominic Delavale, a Royal Navy sub–lieutenant, who also happens to be a brilliant pianist, her conviction that “love at first sight” is only for storybooks flies out of the window. But the love that they believe will last forever is destroyed by another woman’s jealousy. Dominic’s life, too, is devastated by tragedy, and a fatal misunderstanding finally tears their lives apart.
In the following six years, both of them attempt to build separate new lives, until fate brings them together again. But now circumstances are very different, and a happy ending is not even on the horizon. Dominic is no longer a naval officer, and Emma knows that he needs belief and encouragement to achieve his life’s ambition, but giving him that help also means giving up the one thing she wants more than anything else in the world. Will her sacrifice be in vain?
"A romance with good characters and excellent portrayal of blindness and learning to live with it means it is worth picking up."
Reviewer: Angel for Bookangel.
Emma Tarrant is a young student who falls in love with a naval officer Dominic Delavere. However, due to the machinations of her jealous cousin, they split up acrimoniously not realising the truth and Emma shortly moves to Canada. Six years later and engaged to a professor, she is returning to carry out some scholarly investigative work in England and runs headlong into Dominic. Unfortunately, Dominic was blinded in an undersea explosion and does not recognise her, and she disguises herself to avoid the confrontation, even though she still has feelings for him. When she finds out that he has been entered into a music competition, but that Dominic is refusing to play as he does not want to win out of a sympathy vote. Emma resolves to make sure he will play, even if it means giving up the person who she once loved. However, the more she helps out, the more she finds she is still in love with him.
This is a fairly standard romance which hits all the usual notes in telling its tale. The plot is pretty standard, and I could guess most of the things that were going to occur, in one form or another, but that didn't stop them from being fairly well put together. You just know that by the end, everything will have been resolved to a degree and they are living happily ever after. However, the characters are well written, with their motivations understandable, and you do get a good feeling for their actions. I will also give a lot of credit to the sensitive and well-handled descriptions of Dominic's blindness and the impact it has on him and those around.
My main complaint is that you really know very little about Emma at all, as the main character. Yes, it can make it easier to put yourself in her place, but given that we find out so much about the other characters, it would have been nice for her to be more fully fleshed out. Also, the subplot with his father and its resolution felt tacked on to the end, as if it was something that needed fixing but wasn't given the time or space to be fully realised.
Overall, if you are into romance novels, this is worth reading. It's full length, good characters and excellent portrayal of blindness and learning to live with it, means it is worth picking up. Rating:4
