I felt very torn about this book. I had really been looking forward to reading it, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting and I can't say it lived up to expectations. I read a lot of reviews about this book and Shades of Gray (SOG being the original version that was published - Noble Cause was published for the 150 year anniversary of the war as a shorter book with a HEA ending) and expected something that was a little heavier on the historical than the romance, but I often felt that the plot unfolded more as a romance, just without the sex scenes.
It felt that certain passages were missing - that the author jumped from one part to another and that important plot developments had been excluded or glossed past (whether or not this had to do with the shortening of SOG to NC, I'm not sure), but I found myself having to double back a few times to make sure I hadn't somehow skipped an entire chapter or something.
Certain aspects of the relationship between Andrea and Hunter also didn't feel right to me. I would agree with one other reviewer here that the arguing got a little tedious at times. I also didn't feel that it always followed a natural progression.
However, despite all of this, in the middle I got so absorbed in the book that hours flew by at one point without my being aware of it. And I do appreciate the ability to get so drawn into a book that everything falls away for a while, and therefore, I'm giving the book a 3, rather and a 2.
