Captured by the Highlander by Julianne MacLeanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
First things first: I really don't get into highlander romances. But I really enjoyed MacLean's Victorian romances, so I thought I'd give this one a try. It's set after the Jacobite revolt of 1715. An Englishwoman engaged to a brutal English soldier is kidnapped by the titular Highlander, and in the end they both have to deal with conflicting loyalties and carving out a path for future happiness. I realized while reading this book that I don't like kidnap victim romances either. First of all, it's hard to separate romance in this situation from Stockholm Syndrome. And another is that you have this constant attempt to escape/external danger/protect-recapture cycle going on, which puts the captor in an unfairly better light than he otherwise would be, and usually makes the heroine look annoyingly naive (which this heroine, incidentally, is, at least at the beginning of the book).
None of the Scottish people in this book speak in any kind of accent/dialect whatsoever, and I don't know if that's wisdom on the author's part--I mean, I'm sure most authors can't get it right, so is discretion here the better part of valor? Or is it just that dialogue like "dinna fash yersel', lassie" is part of the cheesy fun of highlander books?
I think this book would appeal to people who like highlander romances or captive type romances, but it wasn't quite capable of drawing in someone like me who doesn't.
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Hey Joy - I was just thinking that you should tag (or label, or whatever they call it in blogger) your books by # of stars - I know you're on goodreads and I could sort by stars, but it would also be nice to have a link here so you could jump to all of the 5-star books, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good idea. In fact, I may tag them topically and by rating.
ReplyDelete