Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Scottish Boy

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

The Scottish Boy by Trungles, Alex de Campi

21 reviews

pitsikakku's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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menomica's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

He knows now the word for the soaring feeling he gets in his chest every time he looks at his squire. He knows now the name of the song his body sings when he touches his friend. It is love. And it is impossible.

Maybe my brain is rotted because everyone’s saying they hated this book meanwhile I was getting my life with this.

Once you know and understand that this book was originally a stucky fanfic everything clicks. Like once you see and accept that it’s a repackaged ~~and repolished~~ fanfic

I know they had to chang the names for legal reasons but I need to know the original character roster. Who the fuck was Montegue in the original fic??? Every time there was a new character introduced I was like was that originally and MCU character or an OC? Someone send me the characterlist I’m dying to know!!!

off ao3 it makes a lot more sense. Like with this book, I really felt like I was reading a fic, just kind of turning my brain off and enjoying the ride. Like of course they’re just gonna have random sex with no fear of painting, painting doesn’t exist in ao3land!

That being said, I would argue this book does manage to stand on its own. Like for me at least I enjoyed watching ~~Steve~~ Harry and ~~Bucky~~ Ian’s relationship grow. And like I said, since it follows more of the fanfic structure, you shouldn’t be suprised to see hot gay sex first, plot intrigue later. But this book really doesn’t get hot and horny till the 25% mark, and there is actually a lot of plot in this book.

Idk I liked it. Wouldn’t be mad if there was a sequel 🤷🏾‍♀️.

Uncle Iain is definitely the kids favorite. Plus I’d love to see Aly, Harry and Iain’s relationship after the books.

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rey_therese07's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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mallorypen's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I don’t think I have reacted as physically as much to any book as I did to this one in a very long time. Gasps, blushes, tears, giggling and full body flinching … holy cow, what a story.

What I loved:

Harry’s abrupt transition from naive boy hoping for glory and riches with war, to disillusioned participant in horrific acts of war, to unwilling jailor, to a man so desperately In love that it changed the rest of the course of his life. His ability to cling to chivalry, even during his darkest years of depression, make him such a good man and worthy of the love he receives.
Ian’s rage and fire - from his capture, to his transition from captive to member of Harry’s household, his journey from doomed pawn to master of his own fate as the Knight of Death. His knowledge of courtly politics, his inability to back down, and his intense jealousy balance his character so well into a compelling character and unwilling hero.
The machinations of Montague and his cronies … and how thoroughly Ian takes them all down.
The medieval courtly GOODNESS … this felt like all the best parts of A Knight’s Tale but infused with the research and delivery of a historian. I died at Ian and Harry’s joust, and Ian throwing away the win at the last moment -!
The Yearning™️ intermixed with the most compelling political intrigue. I’m starting to think that dangerous political machinations as a B plot to a fantastically steamy romance is exactly my brand of storytelling.
The smut was absolutely on fire. I don’t think I’ve blushed so hard listening to or reading anything else this year. “I only bow to one man” hnnnnnng.
The narrator did a great job … Scottish accent notwithstanding.
Elise and Annie. Does this book pass the Bechdel test? Not in the slightest. Are Annie the Straight Aly and Elise the Asexual Badass still great characters? Obviously.

I didn’t love how Harry turned to war to drown out his pain after he thought Ian was dead, but it made narrative sense. It also got Harry to France, so he could be in Ian’s path once again. The ending also wrapped everything up neatly and in a lot less time than the rest of the plot, leaving it feeling a bit like an afterthought. That said, the ending was happy, the chivalrous were handsome, strong and true, and Ian got to meet his “niblings” and I am suffused with joy imagining the love of the household.

… We will also forgive the untimely death of Star. Why are these authors killing all these horses lately???

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r_a's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced

3.75

“I loved you before and I love you now and I’m going to lose you.’"

Before I get stuck into this review, I did want to preface that overall I did enjoy this book and it had some beautiful lines in it (like the one above). But I did have some issues with it.

One of these issues with The Scottish Boy was its length. I believe that the story would have benefited from being spread across two books instead of one. Something that frustrates me is when books are marketed as ‘enemies to lovers’, but they’re a ‘dislike or rivals to lovers’ or aren’t committing wholeheartedly on the ‘enemies’ aspect. The Scottish Boy does fall into the ‘enemies to lovers’ category, but the pacing of the romance felt a bit rushed in relation to the trope and the overall length of the book, creating more of a soft take. Despite this, I did enjoy the relationship dynamic between the characters; it had its moments of beauty and pain, hope and despair. If the story had been presented as a duology rather than a standalone, the ‘enemies to lovers’ aspect could have been given more time to develop, with more attention given to the intricacies of their attraction. Additionally, the political plot could have been explored in more depth, adding more nuance and mystery to key players. Of course, this slower pacing may not be to every reader's taste and is probably more my personal preference as I love slow-burn romances (though I doubt fans of the book would protest spending more time with these characters). But I still can’t help feeling that they went from ‘enemies’ to ‘lovers’ too quickly based on how the English viewed the Scottish at the time.

"And if this is the act that will send him to Hell, then he is willing to burn."

My second issue with the story has spoilers.

I found the title to be misleading. I believe that The French Boy would have been a more appropriate title, as it more accurately reflects the subject matter of the story. However, this would have given away the reveal of Iain’s identity, spoiling it before readers could connect the dots themselves. I also had anticipated that the story would be set more in Scotland and would explore how the main characters' love for each other helped them to overcome their prejudices towards the Scottish and the English. Although I recognise that this may have been too idealistic given the historical setting of the story (though the story isn’t historically accurate to begin with), it could have been interesting to see this explored further. Instead, the book primarily focused on international political secrets and the dangers surrounding the legitimate claim to the French throne. Furthermore, as the book had spent a considerable amount of time building up theories and speculating about who would claim the throne, I had expected that we would spend more time in France than we did to gain a deeper understanding of the political machinations taking place there. However, even though the book only briefly touched on France towards the end, it's worth noting that we spent more time in France than we did in Scotland, despite 'Scottish' being in the title of the book.

I also found that the book included an almost excessive amount of sex scenes at times, which I believe distracted readers from the overall plot and pacing. This was particularly true in the early parts of the book, where I felt that more attention should have been given to establishing and developing the important political background that was later introduced. Perhaps their sex scenes could have been less distracting if the story had been spread across two books, allowing for more pacing and development to facilitate in rectifying the issue. However, as I mentioned above, there was some beautifully written lines in regards to their relationship throughout the book. And despite my want for a little less sex scenes, their scenes were the best part of the book for me.

"I will always come back to you. Always. Even if I have to drag myself out of the grave to do it."

So to sum up: I just wanted this to be two books and have more time with the ambitions of the authors work. I would also deter people away if they’re looking for a more historically accurate book to read. This one might infuriate you. But if you don’t have any issues with that or don’t read too heavily in the ‘historical fiction’ genre – like myself – there is a lot to enjoy in Campi’s M/M romance.

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melarareading's review

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This book is probably erotica, and that's just not my cup of tea, but if it was supposed to be a romance novel:
As many people have said, the constant sex scenes are very graphic, and because the love story gives me the creeps, I couldn't stomach them.
Things I would change: the age of the protagonist, the development of the love story (maybe a love kiss before

masturbating each other

?) and the description of the sex scenes.

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downtown_kb's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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beesocks's review

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

2.5

Too much nsfw to be enjoyable. I felt like i was reading merlin fanfic.

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marioncromb's review

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adventurous emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Disclaimer: I am asexual, and that definitely influenced how much i enjoyed this book

This was one of those unputdownable, breeze-through reads for me, very readable prose, characters i cared about, interesting historical setting, captivating romance. But i had one big problem with it.

For me, there were just far too many sex scenes. This was maybe slightly balanced out for me by having a canon asexual side character, but only slightly, as they are a side character and their asexuality almost just seemed like more of a plot device not to get in the way of the main couple. And the sex scenes were very idealised and explicit, basically just porn:

idealised in that the only two bodily fluids that exist are saliva and jizz, no one has a gag reflex, magically no one ever needs to douche, the sex is always mindblowing etc etc

To give you an idea of how much. This is a book of four roughly equal quarters:
First quarter: plot: a young knight tries to befriend his prisoner
Second quarter: basically just porn, just so much porn
Third quarter: mostly porn, some plot
Last quarter: thankfully back to mostly plot and only some porn

For a 500+ page book, its a lot of porn. But if you like that sort of thing definitely give it a go because i found it very enjoyable otherwise

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mal_eficent's review

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adventurous dark emotional lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I'll admit most of my enjoyment of the story came from talking about what was changed from the original fanfiction it was adapted from, but it's a well researched and enjoyable historical story even if the spoken language and some actions seem out of place with the setting.

Originally this was a Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes Alternate Universe fanfic. Harry was Steve. Iain was Bucky. There are a couple of other direct replacements that my sister remembered (the two Peters mentioned were Peter Parker and Peter Quill, Robbie was Rumlow, for example) but as someone who never read the original I didn't really notice that specific characters were supposed to be Marvel characters and it never drew me out of the story. It was just a fun thing to talk to my sister about while reading a story she enjoyed. That said, I think there are some things that have stuck around from the fanfic.

Even for historical romance, the pacing and way information introduced still felt like a long fanfic. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but there were long portions of just day to day life being described in quick succession that dragged the pacing down. Plus there was the odd dramatic twist that led nowhere, introduced characters that were barely seen again, and did nothing to advance the story which felt like they were supposed to be just easter eggs for fans in the original. Seeing your favourite superhero show up in a fic is great, having the serial numbers of that moment filed off in a novel makes it feel unimportant.

While it was well written and Harry was a delightful point of view character, I was far more invested in the historical tidbits and the little bits of politics we got throughout the story. Traditional historical fiction just kind of expects readers to know facts, whereas Campi went the extra mile to make sure we know how tournaments work, the intricacies of who speaks what language when, and even the whole history of the wars leading up to current events. I enjoyed that, as it's not an era I'm familiar with.

There are quite a few consent issues with the romance, if this is something you don't want in your historical romance. It's centred more around a power imbalance between the two, and less force, but there are a few moments were even I was wincing a little, and I wasn't invested in the romance at all.

There's moment where Harry agrees to Iain's being seriously hurt to stop him running away, which makes sense within context, but is hardly something that I wanted to lead to romance.

They also face a lot of homophobia which, given the power of the church at the time, makes sense yet still isn't nice to read, especially if that's a trigger for you as well. No one but the villains has these opinions, but there's a lot of it.

If you like self published historical romance, or just this era of historical fiction, give this a chance! It was fun, well written, and there's some steamy scenes if you like that sort of thing.

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