Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑 (for the countable scenes, the others are much lighter)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine (mostly heroine)
Percentage of the book the mains are first on page together: 5% (but it’s years before, more like a prologue feel), the main story they are together about 9%.
Cliffhanger: No
Happily Ever After (HEA)/Happy For Now (HFN): Yes
Epilogue: Yes, a few years in the future
Format: checked out audiobook on Hoopla
(Descriptions found at end of my review)

Should I read in order?
It’s not TOTALLY necessary but yes, I think you could here – you’ll get a better feel for the Highlands and families in book 1 and the couple from book 1 is in this one so you will get more enjoyment out of their HEA on page.

Basic plot:
Connor uses a childhood proposal from Brenna to his advantage to get revenge on her current betrothed...

Give this a try if you want:
- Medieval time period (1119)
- Highland setting
- English heroine/Scottish hero
- Huge hero/tiny heroine (hero is described as ‘tall as a pine tree’ and the top of the heroine’s head doesn’t meet his chin)
- the humor was quite fun
- marriage of convenience
- hero wants revenge (and uses the heroine in a way to get it, but not against her or her family)
- light feel of road trip romance
- lower steam – there are a handful of scenes but I would say only a 2 steam feel

First Line
Donald MacAlister didn’t die easy.

My thoughts:
I adored the beginning of this story so, so much! The humor was so fun and I liked their first meeting as adults immensely.

But as we get into the story, I started to not like Connor. He came off as a bit dumb to me over a few things and didn’t seem to truly listen to Brenna and it was really frustrating for me. While I still enjoyed quite a bit of the humor at play throughout the book, a few scenes fell a bit flat for me – like the whole her having to explain comforting to him. The first sex scene also had me cringing a little bit…

I also have some pretty big baggage from my abusive in-laws so reading about toxic family always does a number on my emotions. I struggled to read some parts of this and that was just personal due to what it made me remember. I wanted Connor and Brenna together all the time and in the second half there was a lot more separation for them.

I will say the scene where she tells him to kiss her goodbye always, and he rides to her and scoops her up in his horse had me swooning. I think this book was more of a 3 star read for me, but I rounded up due to loving that scene and some of the delightful humor that I really loved. Of the two in this series, I liked The Bride more but probably wouldn’t reread either. I’m really happy to have finally given them a try though!

Content warnings:

- there is quite a bit of religious talk – heaven, God, praying, etc but it’s not overwhelming and some of it is done in jest (like the heroine saying ‘oh god’ and the hero wondering why she is always praying so much
- abusive, manipulative and toxic family members
- attempted sexual assault
- death/murder on page
- animal abuse, cruelty and death
- could be construed as some roughness with the first sex scene – even though the heroine is in pain, he doesn’t really stop, but she doesn’t ask him to either
- remembrance of child trauma of being forgotten as a child
- death of a parent on page

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: 

No 

 
Chapter 4 (didn’t grab percentage when listening) – kiss
25% - 🔥kisses, missionary
32% - kiss
38% - missionary – quite short and not a lot of details
53% - kiss
58% - remembered brief scenes
66% - kiss
79% - kiss
83% - 🔥missionary (light but still countable)