HIGHLAND DANGER

Ever inquisitive, Lady Alyson MacGillivray embarks on a sea voyage and makes a shocking discovery: The young future king of Scotland is secretly traveling on board. Yet her surprise soon turns to terror when pirates attack the ship, take the boy prince hostage, and leave Lady Alyson to drown.

HIGHLAND WOLF

Known to the world as the The Wolf, Captain Jake Maxwell had been commissioned by the King to follow the prince's secret transport. When he spies Alyson struggling against a violent sea, he moves swiftly to save her. Soon desire sparks between them, bringing them pleasure-powerful and deep. But the young beauty's connection to the prince's abduction puts her in danger. And if their love is to survive, Alyson and Jake must play a game of intrigue with royal-and lethal-consequences.

REVIEW

Actual rating 2.5

This was a slight disappointment. The same issues I had with the last book were there: the jarring way of writing the Scottish dialogue and the less than scorching love scenes. But the things that I really liked about the last book were also there: nice, endearing characters, a hero that's not got a head full of rocks and a female with a bit of backbone. It really would be impossible to dislike either main character as "nice" as they were. If that also makes them a little dull, it's an unfortunate side-effect.

The dialogue problem is mainly the overuse of really unusual interjections such as "sithee", "prithee" or "in troth" at the beginning of almost every sentence. Now, I've read a lot of Scottish romances by this point, and every author has had their own unique twist on how they like to convey the dialogue and dialect, with varying degrees of efficacy, but none have annoyed me as much as this version. I'm happy with just swapping "you" for "ye" and "didn't" for "didna". The rest of it I can interpret myself and have the accent be as minimal or as strong as I like. Unfortunately, with the amount of affectations Scott puts on her dialogue sections, it's more like I have to translate each passage than read it. And I'm a Brit, I dread to think how much harder it would be for American readers who don't hear Scottish speech nearly as much as I do.

“By my throth, lass, I can tell you that I want you... more, I think, than I have ever wanted anything in my life.”

So at this point it's about equal with the last book in terms of positives and negatives, so why did it lose a star? Well, it was a couple of things, all of which are a bit spoilery. Click below if you want to read them.

I don't think I'll pick up the next one as there are ones I enjoy much more, but if you don't think the language thing or the lack of excitement will bother you, do pick up the book as the characters are very charming and likeable.

2.5 Stars ★★
Review Copy: Received from the publisher for an honest review.