TEST
Put on your running shoes … Christina Skye’s Bride of the Mist is a fast-paced marathon of love, betrayal, past-lives, psychic visions, centuries-old hatred, modern-day bombs, evil twins, hot sex, romantic hideaways, roses, quaint cottages, Scottish highlands and British abbeys, ghostly ancestors and phantom cats … and more! Whew! 407 pages that flew by at the speed of light! There’s so much to tell you … where do I begin?
Kara Fitzgerald is a beautiful American who has come to Europe to photograph Scotland’s Dunraven Castle for a special edition of New Bride magazine, where she is an editor. But the laird of Dunraven, hunky Duncan MacKinnon, hates journalists, and doesn’t want to let them on the place. He and Kara collide one night as he is robbing an exclusive London jewelry store, and she is wandering about sensing the showroom’s energy flows and patterns using the ancient Chinese technique of fêng shui. (I met my husband at the grocery store … close enough.)
Kara and Duncan are immediately attracted to each other, and he spends a lot of time running his hands all over her, telling her what he’s going to do to her when he gets her in bed. Fortunately for the reader, Duncan is a man of his word.
Both Kara and Duncan have lots of other things going on in their lives. Kara has incredibly sensitive psychic abilities … which she has occasionally used to help the police solve crimes … and has to constantly keep on guard not to touch people or things or all the images overwhelm her. Duncan has a thoroughly evil twin brother, Kyle, who has turned up after he was thought dead, and who is determined to kill Duncan by blowing him to smithereens. Both Duncan and Kyle are electronics experts, so Kyle sets traps for Duncan, who then only gets a limited amount of time to disarm before kablooey. When Kyle discovers his brother has affection for Kara, he makes sure to put her squarely in harm’s way.
The hatred between the brothers goes back centuries, when another woman was caught between good and bad brothers. The story of Tamsyn, Rowan, and William is woven throughout the modern-day tale via Kara’s visions and provides the foundation for Kyle’s evil nature.
The author has successfully blended characters, time, humor, action, supporting players (of which there are many), visual and sensual appeal, with a very feisty, romantic couple for a fast-paced, page-turning read. After all that went on in the story, though, I felt the action wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly at the end, and there were a couple of loose threads that didn’t get tied up (this book is part of a series and those threads may have been picked up elsewhere). Also, Duncan was very adept, but his versatility was a little unbelievable – a Scottish laird who is also an electronics whiz, helicopter pilot, former Royal Marine, gourmet cook, watercolorist, impromtu male model, who also comes up with just the right angle on lingerie photography just when the photographer thought all was lost, and he’s only just thirty? The love scenes were steamy and plentiful, and, while the prose was not purple, it did blush a bit lavender a couple of times.
Nevertheless, do yourself a favor and give this one a read. It’s good! You’ll like it.
Grade: B+
Book Type: Paranormal Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 10/09/98
Publication Date: 1996
Related Reviews
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.