Title: The Scot’s Bride
Author: Paula Quinn
Series: Highland Heirs #6
Great characters in a messy plot
I would like to thank Paula Quinn, Forever/Hachette Book Group, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Charlie Cunningham has one goal: find a cure for her sister’s affliction and get the heck out of Pinwherry. She can barely stand to look upon her father and brothers since the day they murdered the boy she loved. They stole from her the love of her life and taught her no man is trustworthy. Men and marriage will not factor into her future; she simply wants to live in peace with her sister—but first she has to find a cure. Until she does, she atones for the evil acts of her father and brothers as best she can.
Patrick MacGregor loves life. He does what pleases him, bedding willing lasses and fighting for coin, with not a care in the world. He has no intentions of settling down…until he meets kind, brave Charlie. Using the name Campbell for his own safety, he’s enamored of the challenge she presents. He’s less enamored of the way she makes him feel—like a selfish cad who needed to reexamine his priorities. He finds himself reluctantly assuming responsibilities so that he might impress her—and as compassion and leadership come to him naturally, he begins to prove a better man than even he thought possible.
Perhaps Patrick wouldn’t mind settling down and having some bairns…as long as he does so with Charlie. But when she learns his true identity and the threat he presents to her family, will she trust him enough to let him make things right?
While not the best Quinn book I’ve read—my favorite remains Ravished by a Highlander—it certainly possessed a certain charm. Patrick and Charlie were great characters with complete arcs. I didn’t like Patrick at first, because he was infuriatingly selfish, careless, and arrogant, but he was supposed to be. I liked that Charlie was too smart and too strong to be seduced by a caddish rake. She resisted Patrick’s charm until he’d begun to prove himself a good man, and it was his sensitivity, responsibility, and bravery that she became attracted to, his physical beauty a mere perk. Elsie was a dear, her purpose to both motivate Charlie and hold her back. The Wallace children captured my heart. I was never sure if I really liked Duff or not, but I had faith in him.
The characters were endearing, but I had issues with the story. First, there was a little too much internal dialogue. Patrick and Charlie’s thoughts became redundant and tedious, clearly puffing up the word count.
The most glaring plot hole—if Elsie had been seeing Shaw Fergusson for a while, why hadn’t he introduced her to butterbur tea? He had to have known the plant was on his family’s land, and I would think he’d heard tell of how it helped his aunt with her breathing. While that would have eliminated Patrick’s revelation and the act that did the most to win Charlie, it would have presented the opportunity for Charlie to get caught sneaking onto Fergusson land to fetch the plant for her sister during the feud. Patrick could have met her at Tarrick Hall instead of at the river. But then I think the book would have been quite different. In fact, now I think on it, if the Cunninghams had known and been friendly with the Fergussons when Charlie and her sister were younger, wouldn’t the Fergussons have recognized Elsie’s asthma and presented the solution? Unless her asthma had developed only in the last five years, which I suppose is plausible, though it seemed implied—if not stated outright—that it had been with her since she was small. And I know Elsie interacted with the Fergussons before the tragedy, because that’s how she and Shaw originally met, I believe. It would have been a very different tale, indeed.
And I have so many questions.
Why didn’t the Dunbars just come out and say that they were collecting on Hendry’s gambling debt when they tried to take Charlie? There was no reason for them not to. Because they didn’t, Hendry’s gambling issues should have been alluded to a couple of times before the end. As it is, it came out of nowhere and made him seem convenient as a villain.
What was the point of having Robbie Wallace die? The only one I can think of is that his funeral gives Patrick and Charlie a reason to be at the Wallace home when Kendrick walked up. But that really wasn’t necessary. They could have discovered him when they went to see the children, or heard in the village that the Wallaces had a mysterious guest and gone to investigate and make sure they were all right. Well, I suppose removing the Wallaces’ protector and provider added to Patrick’s internal conflict, but I still don’t think it was necessary.
Did the Cunninghams ever hire more guardsmen after the Dunbars killed them all? And why on earth did they only have three guardsmen, all on duty at the same time? And if they had guardsmen, how did they never catch any of the children sneaking out at night? For surely there had to be someone guarding at night, or why bother? They must have been really crappy guards. The Dunbars could have sent a man to become a Cunningham guard and kidnap Charlie when no one was around.
I don’t know why the thieves were included toward the end. I didn’t even know they were just nameless thieves until several pages later when it was mentioned in passing. I thought they were Dunbars trying to catch Charlie alone to abduct her; I waited and waited for the attack to be discussed, but it never was. They had no ties to the story, so why include them? To provide action? To demonstrate Charlie’s fighting skills? To alert Patrick to Charlie’s presence? Wouldn’t it just have been easier to claim he was highly trained and detected her on his own? It just wasn’t necessary.
The Dunbars could have been better utilized in general. Did they really just let the matter go?
And how did Allan Cunningham react to everything? To the discovery of Kendrick alive? To Hendry’s gambling problem and what he’d gambled with? To the revelation of Patrick’s real name and everything it meant? To Elsie’s wedding a Fergusson? To Duff leaving to meet his real father and deciding to live at Camlochlin? What did he do once he was left all alone to stew in bitter misery?
What did the MacGregors think of all this? We never saw Tristan and Isobel, and I would have thought their reaction would have been more important than Davina’s or Callum’s, considering Patrick was their son and the story had a great deal to do with Isobel’s family. It was nice to see Davina and Callum, but they didn’t have any reaction to Patrick showing up with a wife and Will’s bastard son, either. They were all remarkably blase about it.
I’m interested in Duff getting his own story. I kind of want to get to know him better, see him settle in at Camlochlin and bond with his father, stepmother, and half-brothers. Duff deserves a good lass to fall in love with and live HEA.
This book made me want to revisit Tristan and Isobel’s story. Don’t worry, though, this one can stand alone.
And the good news is, while researching where this one fit into the rest of the series, I discovered some fantasy novels Paula’s written recently that I wasn’t aware of because she wrote them under a pseudonym. I plan to check them out.
Overall, Quinn could have taken a little more time to make the plot lean and mean instead of adding unnecessary fluff. I look forward to the next one; “Laird of the Black Isle” sounds awesome.
