My Review
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| Rating: 4 Stars |
I really enjoyed this book! I've only recently started reading highlander romances, and I'm still iffy on if I love or hate them. A big part of that is the dialect, making the dialogue sometimes hard to schlep through. I feel that the dialect in Surrender to the Highlander was a little heavy handed, and also inconsistent. Edith would say "not" in one breath and in the next say "no' ". Another character would refer to something as "my plaid" on one page and later "me plaid". After just finishing another highlander romance where they used "nae" for not, it felt uncomfortable to me to read the shifting "no'/not" in this book. I also REALLY didn't like Ronson's swearing. He supposedly picked it up from Niels and his brothers, but you never see the adults actually swearing that much, and certainly not that disgustingly. I felt it was overdone and off-putting and could have been handled with a little more delicate of a hand. And that's it, for what I didn't like, let's get on to all the things I loved!!
Surrender the Highlander also focuses a lot on the murder/mystery aspect of the storyline, which is great if you like that kind of thing and less great if you like your romances more emotionally plot driven. I happen to enjoy a little murder and mystery with my romance, so this worked for me! At times I wanted to shake the characters - especially Edith - and yell "That is significant! What are you doing?! Tell Niels and the other people about that, ye gurt dummy!" Without spoiling anything, I will just say that the plot revolves a lot around identifying and catching a murderer, and I kept having my suspicions about who did what and how and why. I was definitely kept guessing, and was super surprised at the big reveal (though I did have some inklings right just a chapter or two before that, so there was definitely foreshadowing!). That part of the plot was handled very masterfully, and I felt it wasn't just a cardboard cutout villain with wishy-washy motives.
I loved Edith, who is both fiery fierce and humbly kind. She works hard with her people and doesn't consider herself above them just because she's lady of the castle. She's very naïve in some things (the fruit preserves!! OMG, I died!!) but isn't afraid to stick up for herself, for her people, and for what she knows is right. She's a strong and compassionate character, and has a great balance to her. Niels is also great, and I do love me a growly over-protective alpha male. Their dynamic is great, and while they only know each other for a short time (the entire book takes place over only a week or so, if I recall correctly) their relationship manages to feel like it develops fairly organically. (No insta-love here! Plenty of insta-lust though…)
This is the fifth book in the series, but can be read as a stand alone. (I'm living proof, having not read the first four books myself!) It does have some spoilers for what I assume are the first four books in the series, since it talks about four other couples and that's typically the MCs of earlier books making a little cameo. Since I haven't read the first four books though I can't absolutely swear it, though Neils' brother and sister appear to me lead characters in two of them. Anyway, any spoilers aren't much more spoilery than what you already know from reading the blurb on the back cover/Goodreads.
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