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1. Step away from the thesaurus. Readers can actually infer emotions from your characters if you write them well enough--endless adverbs, unique speaker tags, explained actions and expressions should be used sparingly, not all over every page.
2. "Love story" does not equal plot development. Is this why everything is a trilogy, because no one wants to write an actual completely plotted book at once?
3. Raking fingers through hair does not count as character development. I feel like I know more about the main dude's mom than about him.
4. If your character is going to literally sit around for the vast majority of the story, then why bother making her this ridiculously overqualified genius instead of a regular historian? Prizes, publications, keynotes? For Pete's sake.
5. Do not give three important characters names that all look the same (Matthew, Marcus, Marthe). I kept having to go back and see/remember who was being talked about.