meh. ( )

Gotta love the angst! ( )

Maldie Kirkcaldy meets Balfour Murray as he's leaving a battle where he was defeated by the Beatons. She helps his wounded brother because she is a healer so Balfour takes her to his keep so she can care for his brother.

Maldie is the bastard daughter of Beaton, the laird and enemy of the Murray's. She has never met Beaton but her mother made her swear on her deathbed to get revenge on Beaton for ruining her mother's life so Maldie traveled for months to find him. Because Beaton is the Murray's enemy, she decides not to tell them who her father is.

I really liked Maldie's character. She was not the usual subdued noblewoman we often find in these stories.

Balfour was okay but seemed to be just seemed to be selfish and wanted Maldie just for sex. He was content to let her just be his lover and nothing more which lowered my opinion of him.

The author kept describing Balfour as being dark, with brown skin. I had a hard time picturing a brown Scot.

One thing that did bother me a lot was that the conversations were often long and drawn out and they kept repeating themselves. I skipped over them.

I loved the secondary characters in this book and look forward to reading more about them. I ( )

Balfour finds Maldie while retreating from a lost battle and takes her to his keep to tend his wounded as well as to seduce her. Unknowing that she's the bastard daughter of the man he was trying to rescue his brother from. Maldie wants her father dead and wants to help the Murrays but hides the truth of herself from all until they believe she's a spy. Nice historical love story.
( )

Weeeell, the title & cover should have told me this was a bodice ripper. But, I saw book 15 in the series on sale for my Nook, titled Highland Wolf, and I assumed (wrongly) that this was a PNR series. I checked GR and they all seemed to have high averages star wise, so I picked up the first one to give it a go. Um, no wolves. Not one. It was a fairly sweet story though, so three stars. I won't read on, but only because I'm just not that interested in the genre. If you're into it, it was good. The story was nice, the characters were endearing, the happy ending was done predictably, but well. ( )