The author tackles how a prevalent disease affects all the main characters in the third of the series about three adult sisters who inherit an inn in Lucky Harbor, Washington. The youngest sister, free-spirited Chloe, is an asthmatic, which is both the interesting as well as the frustrating part of this story for me.

Of the three sisters, esthetician Chloe is perceived to be the non-achiever and free-floater in the family as she goes from spa to spa, often from state to state, with her treatments and potions. Lately she’d been in the high beams of the Lucky Harbor county sheriff because she and her friend Lance, who has cystic fibrosis, have been freeing abused dogs, a pastime that made me admire yet wonder about how well she takes care of herself.

Lucky Harbor Sheriff Sawyer Thompson, a friend of her sisters’ fiancés, can’t understand why he’s attracted to flighty Chloe, but he is. He’s one of the white-hat good guys who still berates himself for his punk teen years, so he doesn’t think he’s good enough for any woman, especially fragile Chloe.

That doesn’t stop him from wanting to have sex with her even though she asks if he’s sexually inhaler-worthy. When she does the deed, her breathing often stops which means she has to use her inhaler to bring herself back from the brink of death. Undeterred, Sawyer is determined to give her inhaler-free orgasms if he can.

So the story wriggles back and forth from Sawyer’s life as sheriff and lover to Chloe’s attempts to prove herself to her sisters and her attraction to Sawyer. I really, really wanted Sawyer to share Chloe’s wonder and excitement about life and Chloe to share Sawyer’s commitment and dedication to others because these essential character traits were otherwise dormant and buried, and needed to be brought out for them to be happy together.

Not only did that not happen, but I was perplexed by so many parts of this story. Why if her asthma is so bad she fears sex with Sawyer does Chloe go out at night freeing animals and sitting in mud baths when she knows these endanger her health? Why don’t her sisters see that Chloe works as hard and sometimes harder at her job as an esthetician as they do at theirs? Why don’t her sisters respect and support her enough that she isn’t cowed at the thought of telling them her ideas for the inn? Why does Sawyer keep bailing her out time after time, and keep getting frustrated and annoyed with her, yet says he loves her?

My list of questions go on and on, each one making it a little more difficult for me really to get wholeheartedly into the story because none of them has to my mind an adequate answer.

Having friends and family members who suffer from asthma, I saw too many of Chloe’s actions as self-destructive, too many times her sisters ignored her as unloving, and too many rescues by Sawyer when over-worked and drop-dead tired, he needed someone to rescue him, to make me feel fulfilled at the end of this book.

Fortunately, Shalvis is such an elegant writer that all these concerns and doubts occurred after I’d finished reading and was re-examining the plot for this review. My initial response was one of disquiet, the let-down when a story doesn’t quite meet one’s expectations.