After a surprise raid by the Campbell clan, Ross MacMillan is the new chieftain of the MacMillan clan after his childless uncle dies in battle. Besides his uncle's death, the costs were high and Ross knows the Campbells will be back. There's nothing for it, he and his two siblings need to marry (and fast!) to secure the necessary alliances to rebuild and protect their clan. Ross doesn't entirely trust the man but he goes to Iain MacDonnell and strikes an agreement to marry his eldest daughter.
Ross though, well he's a busy man rebuilding and reinforcing their holdings for the next, could happen at any moment, invasion. So he sends a man in his place to wed Lilidh by proxy. One small fly in the ointment, it's not Lilidh hiding behind the veil, it's her younger sister Ilysa, the one with a whispered about deformity (a malformed arm) who has spent the last several years banished to a nunnery.
Ilysa admits to the duplicity to Ross's man just as they're crossing into MacMillan territory, so this doesn't drag out for too long. Ross is decidedly not happy - mainly because he doesn't know what Ilysa's father is driving at by having him marry the other daughter. But the fact remains he needs a MacDonnell bride and thus far her father seems to be keeping his promises with gold, supplies and fighting men. It's just Ross is now waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Ilysa loved the nunnery if only for the fact that she was away from her vile father and equally duplicitous sister. Why is Ilysa in a nunnery? Because of her sister. How does she end up married to Ross and not her sister? You guessed it, her sister. Ilysa whose self-worth is nothing, blossoms with the MacMillan clan and naturally what we want to happen in a romance novel, happens. These two fall in love.
A heroine with quiet strength but a mountain of insecurities and a smitten hero who helps to rebuild her confidence. So what's the problem? Nothing, until the third act break-up when our, up until that point, sensitive, understanding and competent hero turns stupid, believes lies when, quite frankly, he should know better and hangs our heroine out to dry. I just couldn't with this stupidity, especially when up to that point the hero doesn't display any of these tendencies to be, well, stupid. Picture me making a disgusted huffing noise when I got to this point in the book.
Of course the hero eventually realizes his error and is suitably contrite, but honestly I wanted him to have to crawl naked over over hot coals to earn the heroine's forgiveness, although honestly I'm not sure even that would have been enough for me. The romance ends happily, although the overarching conflict of the villainous Campbell clan sticks around as fodder for the next two books in the trilogy.
So what are we left with? A really solid medieval romance until the third act break-up comes along to ruin everything. Could be I'm softening in my old age, but honestly this feels better than a C read to me, even with my problems with the last third of the story. Brisbin has proven herself more than capable of writing good stories to this reader, albeit the execution of this one didn't entirely work for me.
Final Grade = B-
6 comments:
I think there's nothing harder to articulate that when you see a book's failings (the contrived third act breakup here), and yet you feel a lot more positive about it than when you try to take it apart.
(I had this feeling somewhat with Charlotte Stein's When Grumpy Met Sunshine, also about the third act break up and how it segues into a last chapter that feels like it should be at least three and an epilogue--I just couldn't explain how or why it worked for me, only that it absolutely did, despite my griping)
Is it that we're older or is it that third act breakups are just not what they used to be? They so often seem contrived an unnecessary now. Perhaps they worked better when all the heroes were alpholes to begin with. 😂
@willa: now I'm laugh-crying and scaring the cats! (but you may have a point there, all the same!)
AL: Yes, it's so hard to articulate! The only explanation I have here is that because I enjoyed the journey up until that point I was more "forgiving." Had I been more ho-hum or bored by the story, I think I would have been more annoyed.
Willaful: OMG - I think you're on to something! Because the hero in this book wasn't a raging alphahole, when he kind of morphed into those behaviors at the end (by being stupid) it felt a bit like a cold bucket of ice water. Had he been a jackass the entire time I would have expected such behavior at the third act break-up 😂
Yeah, I see it fairly often, the "kindler gentler" hero who just doesn't work with the old style format.
Post a Comment