Treasured (Secrets of the Loch)
*Starred Review* Isobel Rose’s profligate brother, Andrew, has lost their ancestral Scottish estate, Baillannan, in a card game. Jack Kensington, the Englishman who won their home, intends to sell it. But Isobel has a proposition. If Jack will marry her, she’ll continue to manage their holdings and send the profits to him in London. The marriage will, she tells him, be strictly a business arrangement. Jack is quite taken with the spunky beauty and agrees to her terms. He’s determined to make it a marriage in fact, however, not one of convenience. Unfortunately, there’s someone who’d rather see Jack dead than wed, and no one knows who that is. Camp’s witty historical romance is set during the Highland Clearances, a period when tenants were “cleared” or evicted from their homes by their rich landlords to make room for the more profitable venture of sheep farming. Camp deftly weaves together the enticing elements of her novel—suspense, family relations, the mystery of an old murder, a hidden treasure, and, of course, an unlikely romance. There’s something for everyone in the first book of the Secrets of the Loch trilogy. --Shelley Mosley