This was a charming romance between an English man and a Spanish woman in the mid-1830s where he needs a wife to secure his home through a provision in his father's will and she has recently been let down by the man she assumed would propose because he didn't want her vision problems reflecting on him. Both of them thus had clear reasons for jumping into a marriage with someone from another country. Philip and Carmen were a good match with nice character arcs - it's exciting to see early marriage explored rather than that being the "happily ever after" end of the book. The side characters felt believable as well. I especially liked seeing Carmen and Isabel's sister relationship, which seemed very realistic.