Mar 21 2013
REVIEW: Highlander Most Wanted by Maya Banks
Dear Ms. Banks:
Your historical series is really hit or miss for me. While Genevieve McInnes and Bowen Montgomery are perfectly nice characters with a perfectly nice romance, the tone and spirit of the romance was too similar to the last one for me to fully enjoy it.
Genevieve McInnes was stolen from her bridal party and forced to become the whore of Ian McHugh. She is now disfigured after one too many attempts to resist Ian’s advances. When McHugh is driven from the keep and killed by the Montgomery and Armstrong clans in retribution for his kidnapping of Emmaline Montgomery, Genevieve hopes that she will be sent to an abbey where she could seek refuge. She cannot return to her family, despoiled and ruined.
Within the walls of the Mchugh keep, Genevieve is viewed by almost everyone as a traitor and willing whore. When Ian and his sypmathizers are ousted, the people of the McHugh clan feel free to terrorize and mistreat Genevieve in ways that they feared doing while Ian was alive from calling her names to oversalting her food to outright shunning of her. Genevieve views the treatment as understandable. She has not small amount of self loathing. She offers herself to Bowen in exchange for an agreement that he’ll deliver her to an abbey.
Genevieve is an abused woman and I guess that is why she accepted the hate and vile treatment from the McHugh clan. But her championing of the McHughs against the new invaders (the hero and his new brother in law) seemed over the top. Genevieve doesn’t have a mean or harsh thought toward anyone. She wants to absorb all the hurt into her own body.
In some ways Genevieve is a classic romance heroine. She is beautiful but has a flaw. In this case is the long jagged scar on her face wrought by the knife of Ian McHugh so no other man would want her. She’s deadly with arrows and an accomplished healer. She recognizes the good in everyone. But she did do one thing that weighs heavily on her in order to try to escape from Ian McHugh and that Bowen may not forgive.
Bowen Montgomery takes up the defense of Genevieve, against the McHugh people and to some extent even against his own people. He’s not entirely sure why and despite my view as the omniscient reader, I too, wonder how he can be so compassionate and understanding. Given that Genevieve had already suffered so much pairing her with an asshole would have been hard to read but Bowen being so good and Genevieve being so longsuffering made both come off as rather cartoonish.
While it takes a few attempts by Bowen to bed her that is all that it takes. Given the long history of torment at the hands of a sadist who mistreated her constantly, Genevieve’s acceptance of Bowen in her bed seemed a bit too easy.
This entry into the Montgomery and Armstrong books is full of sudsy angst but I had a hard time connecting with Genevieve and Bowen was a typical Scottish warrior with a good heart. C
Best regards,
Jane
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Mar 21, 2013 @ 13:06:20
Oh no! I loved the first book in the series, but the details you provide here aren’t making me feel too optimistic about this one. We shall see!
Mar 21, 2013 @ 16:54:46
Am I the only one who was thrown by Genevieve and her bow and arrows? On the one hand, the author makes it sound like she had access to them all along. (They were in a small trunk by her pallet and the baddy would destroy items from the trunk when he felt she needed to be punished.) In which case, why didn’t she kill her abductor long before now? And if she didn’t have access to them, that means she hasn’t used them during her year of captivity and yet she’s able to shoot with pinpoint accuracy?? Huh.
Overall, I liked the previous book “Never Seduce a Scot” better.
Mar 22, 2013 @ 06:58:31
@Carolyn: I had the same thoughts! lol Also, there was never a pregnancy mentioned while she was held captive and raped by different men for OVER A YEAR but she gets pregnant after a few nights with the hero??
Mar 22, 2013 @ 07:52:12
@ClaudiaGC: That’s probably because her body had ways to shut down the bad guy sperm. It’s science.
Mar 22, 2013 @ 10:17:33
@cecilia: *dies*
Mar 22, 2013 @ 10:44:01
@ClaudiaGC: YES! That one bothered me too, especially since the author made it clear there were multiple guys so it wasn’t just that the bad guy was sterile.
@cecilia: Now we know that some politicians get their “facts” from fiction books.
Mar 22, 2013 @ 12:16:08
The more I hear about this book – the less I’m interested in reading it. *ugh*
Mar 22, 2013 @ 16:33:18
I didn’t like the first book at all…Like the DA review, it felt like all the emotion came from Eveline being mistreated by servants and such and no conflict at all between her and Graeme…I’m not wasting another 7.99 on this one…I’m realizing most of Maya Banks are becoming a miss for me.. too much external conflict will do that to me…
Mar 22, 2013 @ 16:39:31
@cecilia: I know! It’s the Magic Peen effect!