In the summer of 1966, Christina Hardcastle—“Tiny” to her illustrious family—stands on the brink of a breathtaking future. Of the three Schuyler sisters, she’s the one raised to marry a man destined for leadership, and with her elegance and impeccable style, she presents a perfect camera-ready image in the dawning age of television politics. Together she and her husband, Frank, make the ultimate power couple: intelligent, rich, and impossibly attractive. It seems nothing can stop Frank from rising to national office, and he’s got his sights set on a senate seat in November.
But as the season gets underway at the family estate on Cape Cod, three unwelcome visitors appear in Tiny’s perfect life: her volatile sister Pepper, an envelope containing incriminating photograph, and the intimidating figure of Frank’s cousin Vietnam-war hero Caspian, who knows more about Tiny’s rich inner life than anyone else. As she struggles to maintain the glossy façade on which the Hardcastle family’s ambitions are built, Tiny begins to suspect that Frank is hiding a reckless entanglement of his own…one that may unravel both her own ordered life and her husband’s promising career.

My rating:  3.75 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will count towards my “Holiday 2015 Bookish Bingo” reading challenge, marking off the “Multiple POV” square, since this book is told alternating between Tiny and Caspian’s points of view. I really wanted to read this book after reading Along the Infinite Sea recently by this author, I wanted to see what more I could get of a background story on the Schuyler sisters. Tiny (Christina Schuyler) has always done the right thing, she’s always been the perfect daughter and the now she’s the perfect wife. But she’s tired of being perfect, and what she really wants is just to be herself, whoever that might be. When on a chance encounter she meets Captain Caspian Harrison, she asks him to help her disappear. The story line alternated between 1964 when Tiny asks Caspian to help her escape from her fiance and her family and 1966 where Tiny is obviously married so as the story unravels between the two time periods the reader is left to wonder what exactly ended up going down in 1964. And also what the hell is going on in 1966 because there is some shady stuff going on behind the scenes! In 1966 Tiny is married to Frank Hardcastle, who is running for Senator. And now here to help him is his handsome cousin Caspian who recently lost one of his legs in the Vietnam War.
I really did enjoy this book. I didn’t give it as great of a rating only because I found it to be slow in the beginning of the book. I can’t tell if it was the book (pretty sure it wasn’t) or my crazy schedule that only allows me to read for 10 minutes at a time while trying not to get distracted (most likely the reason) but whatever the case I just had trouble getting into the book and it didn’t give me a ton of enjoyment. Once I got mid-way and the story picked up for me though it was better and the end had a great twist that I never saw coming which I always love. Overall this was a solid, good book for me and I would definitely recommend reading it!

The bottom line: This book was a little slow to get into for me, most likely because of my limited available reading time and less likely because of the book. The ending really was quite riveting though, I didn’t want to put it down! Would recommend this one!

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