We often don't realize the comparative idiocy of youth until we're older. Awhile ago, we had a new employee in my company. Newly graduated from college, she's only 22. The rest of us, being old, wise, ancient creatures of mid-20 to 30-somethings, looked upon her with contempt. "She's a baby!" we howled. "I was so stupid when I just graduated from college and I thought I knew everything!" To be sure, 10 years from now, we will reflect and look back at our relative stupidity now and say "I was so stupid when I was ___ and I didn't even realize it!"So youth. Youth and the idiocy with which it brings is the fault of this book. Yet I could not stop reading it. The main character, frankly speaking, is a moron. She's 22, and it's not just her age that's to blame for the fact that she's bloody insane. This is a girl who has spent her entire life. Her entire fucking life talking to an imaginary "lover." One whose identity she doesn't know, one who might not even exist. One who is, I shit you not, one of her three cousins. Ok. Let's just overlook the incest for a moment. She comes from a long line of blue-blooded Anglo ancestors whose interbreeding probably make Jamie and Cersei and the state of Alabama (and most of Mississippi) look downright normal. It's also the 70s. I wasn't even born then, so what do I know? Maybe falling in love with ones' cousin was totally the rage then. So let's just pretend we can overlook the whole cousin thing. No. My biggest issue was that she's been talking telepathically with an imaginary friend whom she calls "Lover" (again. Cousin. Ick) for her entire life. “You can’t, out of the blue, ask a second cousin who has given no hint of it: ‘Are you the Ashley who talks to me privately?” And she never once considers that this is abnormal. Again, this is the 70s. Maybe back then that was totally ok, too. Maybe back then you weren't possibly diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a comfy padded cell and a lifetime of colorful pills if you had dreamt of an imaginary friend long past childhood. So yes. Being the modern woman that I am. Being the wise old woman that I am, I think she's a bloody fucking moron. Allow me to also mention the fact that this idiot spends the entire book deliberating which of the cousins this lover could be, and then ignores the fact that:1. He could have killed her daddy “[He]had driven the hit-and-run car that had knocked Daddy down. [He] had killed my father.” 2. He could be *gasp* a complete figment of her imagination “But what are you suggesting?’ I demanded. ‘That it could be some fantasy thing I made up as a child, and now can’t get rid of? I mean, I know that children do invent imaginary friends, but for heaven’s sake, they grow out of that, and it isn’t that, or anything like it! It’s a real relationship, Vicar, I promise you!” No. I didn't accidentally give this book a 4. I liked it a lot. I don't know what to say. It's one of those devastating train wrecks from which you can't tear your eyes. It is an old-school, old-fashioned romance. Gothic. Wildly atmospheric. Keeps you guessing until the end. Mary Stewart writes in the vein of Daphne du Maurier. You have to make excuses for the time and the place. You have to forgive it the faults of its characters because they're not out of place for the day. The love interests in her books are not sensitive types, they are the bad boy sweep-you-off-your-feet type. They are the maddeningly macho types who whisper possessive words to you and somehow make you believe it type.Yeah. I liked it. Despite the heroine's idiocy. Despite her youth. Despite itself. Warning, there is the use (not from the main character) of the n----r word.