Alex MacDonald, the Scots hero of Margaret Mallory’s The Sinner, has every attribute one could dream up for the perfect alpha male hero. He’s a “blindingly handsome” golden haired sex god with a killer wit and a deadly claymore. He can easily defeat, singlehandedly, groups of ferocious warriors and, still dripping his enemies’ blood, kiss…
Intersections between the present and the past, romance and just a touch of the otherworldly, and, of course, plenty of dark secrets. These are the key ingredients of the sort of books that grabbed my attention all through high school and college, and Legacy has them in spades. I don’t know how I managed to…
At the beginning of Karen Ranney’s new romance, A Borrowed Scot, the hero, Montgomery Fairfax, is at a London club surrounded by Latin-chanting men dressed in hooded robes. He’s there because he’s curious about the provenance of a numinous diamond-ringed mirror he’s inherited. Montgomery is the newly named Lord Fairfax of Scotland’s Doncaster Hall and…
Captured by Desire is a Tudor romance set in Scotland, with characters who are both commoners: The heroine is a goldsmith’s apprentice, and the hero is a huntsman for a nobleman. This scenario was certainly novel enough to catch my eye. But while the idea is fresh, the prose really isn’t. The love scenes and…
I’m not usually one for blatantly contrived and unrealistic set-ups. However, with Some Like it Scot, if you just accept the implausibility of the back story, you’ll find a surprisingly realistic and lovely romance. Graham McLeod is the Laird of a small island in the Outer Hebrides islands of Scotland. According to tradition, the chieftain…
Have you ever wondered how reviewers balance review-reading and books for fun? Everyone does it differently, but I’m fairly regimented; starting at the beginning of the month, I’ll read three books for review (that’s our standard reviewer commitment), then my book club book. If I have any month left over (often I don’t), I’ll read…
For me, comfort reads often involve a lot of angst. Something about the theme of love as redemption, and seeing love heal characters and help free themselves from their suffering reaches me on a deeply emotional level. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy Karen Ranney’s work; she does tortured characters quite well. In A…
Like a moth to a flame, I couldn’t resist the lure of another time travel romance set in Scotland. Maybe I’m looking for the Holy Grail of Romanceland (read: Diana Gabaldon writing under a pen name to fill time between Outlander novels). Or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment. I wouldn’t call Master of…
Such is Diana Gabaldon’s talent for characterization, that even when her plots meander, she still holds my interest. When I first started readingLord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, I was completely caught up in the story and quickly rushed through almost half the book. Unfortunately, it was a few days before I managed…
While the title Rivals for the Crown adequately captures the major historical backdrop for this book, it somehow does not do complete justice to the rich tapestry formed by the lives of Isabel de Burke, Rachel de Anjou, Henry de Boyer, Rory MacGannon, and Kieran MacDonald. From the opening scene in which the reader is…