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A review by clairereadstoomuch
Highlander's Heart by Mariah Stone
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
4.42 rating?! Really Goodreads?? This is why I have trust issues.
This book is 2 stars at best only because giving one star feels insulting. And here's why.
The actual premise of the story is good: time travel stumbles into XII th century Scotland and meets a handsome and broken Highlander. She suffers from memory loss but there's something familiar about Ian, the Highlander, and his home. So he hires her as a cook.
The thing is that the whole book was flat. No character development. No passion. No heat between them.
For like 80% of the book it was just the FMC throwing herself a pity party. How she's not good enough, how she's a burden and no one wants her, how it's best that she leaves so she releaves Ian of her weight. Ugh. If only she had talked back, at least once, when random people would throw verbal lashings at her, maybe she wouldn't have come across so annoying and flat.
Even him, tall, brutish but gentle Ian felt flat. He was sold as a slave in Baghdad where he spent the last 11 years of his life. His soul is crushed and he understandably suffers from PTSD.
But the "I am not worthy of her because I'm a monster, she deserves someone better" rhetoric only works so far. Absolutely not so far to be used as the third act break up. Nah-ah.
Then all of a sudden, in the last 5% of the book, she finally finds the ball to be other than self-loathing and pitiful?
And don't even get me started on the writing. Ugh. The sex scenes were cringy af. "Ripe form"? What are you describing a woman's body or a fruit?
Just- did we read the same book?
This book is 2 stars at best only because giving one star feels insulting. And here's why.
The actual premise of the story is good: time travel stumbles into XII th century Scotland and meets a handsome and broken Highlander. She suffers from memory loss but there's something familiar about Ian, the Highlander, and his home. So he hires her as a cook.
The thing is that the whole book was flat. No character development. No passion. No heat between them.
For like 80% of the book it was just the FMC throwing herself a pity party. How she's not good enough, how she's a burden and no one wants her, how it's best that she leaves so she releaves Ian of her weight. Ugh. If only she had talked back, at least once, when random people would throw verbal lashings at her, maybe she wouldn't have come across so annoying and flat.
Even him, tall, brutish but gentle Ian felt flat. He was sold as a slave in Baghdad where he spent the last 11 years of his life. His soul is crushed and he understandably suffers from PTSD.
But the "I am not worthy of her because I'm a monster, she deserves someone better" rhetoric only works so far. Absolutely not so far to be used as the third act break up. Nah-ah.
Then all of a sudden, in the last 5% of the book, she finally finds the ball to be other than self-loathing and pitiful?
And don't even get me started on the writing. Ugh. The sex scenes were cringy af. "Ripe form"? What are you describing a woman's body or a fruit?
Just- did we read the same book?