The two leads characters were horribly inconsistent. I got whiplash from how jarringly they went from complex, interesting, flawed characters to shallow, one-dimentional cliches part way through the story. It was so abrupt and jarring it almost felt like a different author took over completely.

So much drama that felt shoved and forced into the story line. The characters fundamental personalities just abruptly changed, almost completely, especially Ian.

He suddenly goes from a beautifully romantic hero-lead to toxic red-flag villain, seemingly out of nowhere. Laura's change isn't quite as drastic or unfounded given that they established a background of ab*se that continued to adulthood, but she still changes pretty drastically from supportive, forward thinking, wise, intelligent, and introspective, to very illogical and making decisions very out of sync with her character that had been established; obviously drama for the sake of drama.

Ian starts off as a good, and realistically flawed, human. Kind, thoughtful, caring, and trying to be respectful of boundaries, but quite suddenly turns into a toxic, controlling, possessive, manipulative, and violent character.

(when desperately trying to confess his love for Laura so she doesn't run from him he essentially traps her in a carriage with him and threatens to kill himself if she refuses him)

An ab*ser framed as a hero and all his behavior excused simply because he loves her soooo much.

Laura is established as a strong champion of herself and other women, wise to the ills of the societal boxes, seeing that the world is beginning to change. But as the story goes on she is now written as someone upholding all the societal boxes who's terrified of going outside of them, and taking on all the blame in her relationship as if it's right and true that all faults are hers.

At one point Ian's oldest nephew is brought into the story for a very awkward and jarring plot line that just felt completely unnecessary and highlighted again the massive character inconsistencies. The nephew reveals to Ian to have just returned from Paris after suffering through a horrible physically (violence and SA) and mentally abusive relationship. Ian is the first person he has trusted to tell, eventually telling Laura as well. As he spends time with Ian and Laura, and eventually more time with just Laura, he begins to heal and trust women again. But he twists his view of Laura as his safe savior, as being in love with her. Instead of handling this complex plot with some nuance and depth, it's reduced to an overly dramatic shallow cliche. The nephew confessing to Laura that he thinks he is in love with her and begging her to let him stay close to love her one-sidedly, and then re-using exact toxic abusive plot point from earlier in the story (if you don't love me and accept me like this I will kill myself). Ian becomes enraged and both shoots (8-shots in a small room with the two of them and his wife) and nearly beating his nephew to death. Ian going from "I view my nephew as my brother, my best friend, like a son, to abruptly and extremely violent and attempting mu*der. And this after repeatedly restraining himself from violence against a seemingly creepy old suiter and a known abusive uncle. This isn't the first time in the story that Ian went totally out of character from 0-1000 on the manipulative, violent abusive personality scale for drama's sake.