Review: Unlikely Tale of Love Between a Scots Woman and an Englishman
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 25, 2014
The first thing I noticed about this story is that it must be part of a series as other couples are mentioned or have cameo appearances so that I was left wondering who they were and how they fit in. It was like walking in on the middle of a party. Hence, I don’t recommend reading this as a “stand alone.”Second, to my way of thinking, this is neither a Scottish historical nor a pirate saga. We are told the hero was a pirate; we never see it. And the heroine, Mairi McFadden, a Scot, seemed more like the English who were her companions for the entire book. With the exception of a scene at the beginning and one at the end, the whole story takes place in London.Set in the late 18th century, after the Scots’ defeat at Culloden, the heroine is searching for her brother Grant, a Scottish patriot on the run, as she needs him to help with their lands. She “hires” Phin Lockwood, an Englishman, to find him. She agrees to “pay” him by giving him her virtue—and she looks forward to it. (Really?) Meanwhile, and not so coincidentally, Phin is using her to get to her brother. If Phin can turn Grant over to the king, his past bad deeds will be forgiven.From the beginning, Mairi seemed more concerned with her English lover than her Scots brother, willingly selling out her brother even though she knows it means his death. Given what the Scots experienced at the hands of the English during and following the Battle of Culloden, I found that hard to believe. And the heroine’s occasional statements that she didn’t like the English seemed frail protests.For all that, I have to say the book was well written. It’s just that the story did not seem plausible to me and did not deliver on the promise of the title and the book’s cover.Note: I received my copy of the eBook from Net Galley for an honest review.