If you like reading about handsome people, perfect settings and beautiful scenery, this is the book for you. If, however, you want a book with some meat to it that might give you more than just an average pleasant reading experience, you should know that this is not that kind of book.

Leonie Corinth moved from Manhattan to the Hudson River Valley after her divorce from her very wealthy husband. The divorce was a horrible shock to her, but she’s adjusted well (remarkably well). She meets Sam Nicholson when he agrees to help her remodel the house she bought and intends to turn around and resell. Sam and Leonie are extremely attracted to each other, but Sam is married to a cold, mean woman. What are they to do?

Well, that short summary pretty much says it all. This book is nothing more, nothing less. And that was my problem with it. It had a “been there, done that” quality to it. Till the End of Time has a much used plot and Gould does not handle it in a unique way. Plus the characters are extremely one-dimensional. The one thing that saved this book is Gould’s exceptional ability at painting scenes with words, particularly those describing settings.

Leonie is perfect. She doesn’t have one flaw. She’s beautiful, smart, savvy, chic, happy, thin and amazingly well-adjusted after a supposedly brutal divorce. She’s so nice, you can’t hate her, but she’s so perfect, you really can’t warm up to her. Hardly anything gets this woman down. Leonie’s so well-adjusted she has nowhere to go.

Sam is perfect also, but he’s married and his wife’s a bitch. Aren’t they all? I mean in novels where the hero is married to someone other than the heroine. Sam also gets the only mild character development and it is very mild indeed – he decides to let go of his guilt and move on to a happier life.

This leads back to the been there, done that quality. How does a writer free a hero with a bitchy wife? There aren’t that many ways and Gould takes the path of least resistance. A couple of secondary characters in the form of Leonie’s best friend and real estate agent Mossy, her former best homosexual friend from Manhattan, and her ex-husband don’t do much to round out the cast. Mossy could have been fun, but she got annoying. The tiniest bit of suspense at the end seemed tossed in to try and liven up the book.

There’s nothing horribly objectionable about this book, but there’s nothing to make it stand out with the exception of the good descriptive writing. Gould never made me care about her characters, and their love that could last for all time seemed a bit tepid. I sure want to visit the Hudson River Valley, though. It sounds like a gorgeous place.