So, fun story: Hunting for a Highlander is really my first Highlander romance. I’ve read several of the Outlander books, but those are really time travel romances that happen to have Highlanders.
Generally, I am not a huge historical romance reader. But my Mommy Book Club picked a few in a row, and I enjoyed all of them, so I figured I’d read more.
I listened to the digital audiobook of this one, so a note on the narrator: He seemed to be an actual Scottish person, brogue and all, which was delightful. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Overall, I really liked this book. I feel obliged to mention there are a lot of references to rape, but I feel like that’s probably pretty standard for this subgenre. There’s no actual rape on page for this story.
Things I loved: The hero didn’t think he wanted to get married. He wasn’t looking for a bride, and when he found out his family was seeking one for him, he still thought he’d blow it off. The heroine was not desperate for a husband, but she wasn’t fiercely independent, either. I feel like in most historicals, they tend to go one of those two ways, and it was nice to see some middle ground. There were some family flaws to deal with, which added some shenanigans, but no great tragedy.
Things I loved less: There was a lot of emphasis on how plain the heroine was. It’s nice to see a not-gorgeous heroine; it’s not so nice to see everyone giving her a hard time about it. Also, mental illness is the bad guy here. The antagonist is clearly psychotic. As a person who suffers from mental illness in a society that stigmatizes it, I hate that depiction in literature.
Overall, though, I enjoyed this book enough to overlook the things that bothered me. I would recommend it unless those happen to be big pet peeves for you.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this review are Bookshop affiliate links.
3 Boys 3 Billion Books 