She appears to be perpetually on the brink of depression, and I was hoping that someone would help her out of it, but there was no real ending to her story - the last time we see her she is still at Summerset Abbey, living out a dull and lonely existence. When everyone is helping with the war effort, she stays at home, lamenting how useless she is. She seems to have no marriage prospects, as she does not have a beau at any point in the books. All throughout the trilogy she is constantly seeking her mother's approval and instead being pushed away in favor of her older brother, the favorite child. My biggest frustration with the book, however, and what really held me back from giving it 5 stars, was the lack of resolution to Elaine's story. Would Rowena find some other sort of pilot job? Would Victoria continue volunteering at the hospital? Had Prudence's life improved at all? Did all the men survive the war? It would have been nice to have more closure. That being said, I was a bit disappointed in the ending - I wish there had been an epilogue because I would have liked to see how Victoria and Rowena's lives turned out after they had been married for a bit and I was wondering where everyone would find themselves after the war ended. It was a pleasant surprise when all three main characters ended up married and happy, but not necessarily with the person the reader would have assumed. Even more, I was dreading Rowena getting back together with John, who had acted in an awful and incredibly cowardly fashion in the second book. I was inwardly wincing when World War I conveniently started and there would be an easy out to take Prudence's sweet-but-not-passionate husband out of the picture and get her back together with Sebastian. I was afraid that Brown would take the cliched route and have the three sisters end up with their first loves, but, refreshingly, that was not the case. While I wouldn't call it a page-turner, it was a light and easy read. This was a good conclusion to an enjoyable trilogy.

Spring Awakening by T.J. Brown