Romance Quest!: ‘To Love a Highlander’ by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

I would have liked to have liked this one. It had some deliciously id-ish and romance-y plot points: Our leading lady Mirabelle, wants to get out of a potential arranged marriage by obviously losing her virtue to notable randy bastard (a literal one) Sorely.

And yet.

I got halfway through, before completely giving up, but I probably should have given up earlier.

There are three main problems: the author’s love affair Scotland, and some weird suspension of disbelief problems, which both spring from her tendency to tell rather than show.

Now, this author really likes Scotland, especially the Highlands. This is fine. What sets my teeth on edge is the way she writes about it. If she just described the Highlands, my reaction would probably ‘Oh, a harsh, peat-y, granite-y place? Like the Australian Alps! Yes, those a very fine places to like, I can see why this author likes the Highlands.’ Except she doesn’t describe them. No, she goes on about how the Highlands Is The Best Place in the World, Ever. And that doesn’t make me like the Highlands. That makes me turn sympathetically to the Australian Alps and go ‘There, there, don’t listen to the mean lady, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. [turns to the author] Don’t Talk To Me Or My Mountainous Son Ever Again.’

This tendency, in combination with her tendency to be a bit All People from the Highlands Are Like [This], is very grating.

And then there’s the weird suspension of disbelief problems. This author almost certainly knows more about medieval Scotland than I do, but she can not write it in a way that makes it seem like she does. This book is full of details that don’t just seem right, or that she doesn’t successfully sell me on. Like, people’s clothes are always nearly falling off. Were medieval Scottish people’s clothes at risk of falling off if you breathed wrong? I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound right. There’s a character who is a sex worker for fun, and in the hands of the another author I could be sold on this character concept, but here I’m just too distracted by wondering what the heck that did to her reputation, how she feels about that, and worrying about pregnancy. (Unplanned pregnancy kinda looms large in this book, because of how important bastardry is to the backstory of our male lead, but it doesn’t affect anyone’s decision making. It’s offputting.)

Then there’s the ghost situation, which is the suspension breaking thing that bothers me the most with the least justification. Our leading lady deals with ghosts... casually. Ghosts are a Thing That Happens, and contact with them is Not That Worrying. And this might be a plausible reaction for a medieval Scottish person. But I’ve encountered a pattern in the past, where someone makes a character from an ~exotic~ culture, and they can talk to the dead because they are Very Spiritual, and Their Culture is Very Spiritual Such That Talking to the Dead is Special But Non-worrying-- except in real life, that culture considers talking to the dead to be NO. JUST NO. And you know what? Medieval Scotland may be one of those places where it would actually be unconcerning. But I don’t feel as confident of that as the author would like me to be.

(Also, the ghosts know fate, and know roughly what will happen to the characters, and comment on it. This was where I put down the book. Because that’s the point it became clear the plot was not driven by the character’s actions, but By the Fate of Love, aka the fucking author.)