REVIEW: Bewitching the Highlander by Lois Greiman
Dear Ms. Greiman:
I have never read a Greiman book before. I always meant to read and have, in fact, purchased your contemporary books, Unzipped and Unplugged before. But with the muscle bound chests and arms and titles with “Highlander”, I wasn’t terribly excited about reading the historicals. As I said a few days ago, I kind of feel that my Scottish historical days are past. My blogging partner, Jayne, puts her Scottish malaise down to too many book with faux Scottish dialect but this is a book I would recommend to her and, in fact, I am going to send this to her.
While there is plenty of dialect in this book, none of its seems faux. In fact, its downright lyrical. I loved the speech patterns of the characters that held true not only in their conversations with each other but in their own internal dialogue.
“I did na ken what I was doing.” And that was the bloody truth. “I swear to the saints. I did na ken. And I was hungry. ‘Twas three days since I had so much as a bite. I saw a meadow filled with sheep and though sure a man of such astounding wealth would na miss one small lambkin.”
Keelan, the hero, was particularly adorable with his penchant for exclaming: Mary and Joseph! Even the lovemaking scenes seemed steeped in the language of the time period.
Her lashes framed her whisky, troubled eyes, and her bosoms . . . Sweet Mary, her bosoms, bunched together like a bouquet of posies!
Keelan is a charmer. It is his one skill. He’s a braw man but not enough to overcome three thugs who beat him to an inch of his life until he convinces Lord Chetfield, the thugs’ employer, that Keelan can heal Chetfield’s illness. Chetfield orders that he be healed and in comes, sweet, innocent, daft Cherie, who is not as she seems. Cherie sets out to heal Keelan while searching for something from Chetfield.
Keelan and Cherie both take turns trying to convince the other to leave the evil household but they are both bound to find the Chetfield’s treasure. Each has no idea about the other’s purpose but they both see something good in the other, comparatively speaking anyone would look like an angel next to Chetfield and top thug, Roland.
It’s a con, a caper, a mystical story that leads to a compelling read. Cherie is a wonderful heroine. She has magnificent female assets and isn’t afraid to use them to appear nothing more than a pretty face, while trying to charm her way around the Chetfield residence. But she seems to always be on the edge of being caught out. Keelan’s near death experience at the hands of Chetfield’s thugs is one that the reader believes might just be brought to a swift and unhappy conclusion in the next paragraph. This story, however, had just the right movement between suspense, humor and sexiness. I couldn’t put it down.
There are clues left to the reader to discern the basis of Chetfield’s evil and while I hadn’t guessed it, I was delighted to remember the trail of breadcrumbs that you had left.
The bad part was the end where I felt you cheated a bit and used a deux ax machina. It seemed that you wrote yourself into a corner at the end and had to use a helping hand to get out of it. The insertion of previous characters wasn’t too hamfisted but their involvement left questions as to other things which if I were to elaborate might ruin the denouement of the story. Suffice it to say it was the one thing that kept this book from being an A but I’ll be reading your backlist titles this weekend.
Best regards,
Jane
PS. Sadly your website has no new content so I can’t link to any excerpt for your book. Readers might be able to find it in their stores this weekend, but the official release date is July 31, 2007 and available at Amazon.
I read a book by her years ago that was fabulous in angst. So fabulous that I was nervous to read another book by her in case I couldn’t handle the drama. Still I have bought a few more of her books and would love to try her and see if she still works for me.
CindyS
I’ve never tried her before but your review makes me want to give her a try. I always love finding new authors to replace those I’ve left behind. Of course I’ve found a lot more than I’ve lost which accounts for the huge pile of books that remains unread.