Title: Surrender to the Highlander
Author: Lynsay Sands
Series: Highland Brides #5
Rating Out of 5: 5 (I will read this again and again and again)
My Bookshelves: Historical romance, Scottish romance
Dates read: 29th March – 11th April 2020
Pace: Medium
Format: Novel
Publisher: Avon
Year: 2018
5th sentence, 74th page: The mud was sucking at her feet, sapping her strength.
In New York Times bestselling author Lynsay Sands’ captivating romance, a lass targeted by an unknown foe is saved – and seduced – by a bold Highlander
Edith Drummond owes her life to Niels Buchanan and his brothers. Waking after an illness to a castle overrun by rugged Highlanders is disconcerting, but so is learning that she’s slowly being poisoned. Niels insists on staying by her side, and Edith soon discovers that even more dangerous is her wild attraction to the fierce warrior.
Niels has never met a more courageous – or enticing – woman than Lady Edith. The idea of such a bonny lass being forced to enter a nunnery is more than any red-blooded Scotsman could bear. He’ll gladly marry her himself. But while sweeping her off her feet is easy, it’ll take all his skill to defeat her family’s relentless enemies and convince her to surrender to his sweet embrace…
Each time I pick up one of the Highland Brides books, I just fall a little more in love with the writing. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. And they’re just so damn cute and sweet. Plus, I just love the interactions between the Buchanan brothers. Starting this story with Saidh being ridiculously pregnant and sending her brothers to check up on one of her best friends was just brilliant. Not only did I get to revisit characters that I kind of loved, but it just continued to tie in everything so damn neatly. It’s a great universe that Sands has created here.
Niels and Edith have had the least difficult and insane courtship of all the relationships so far in this series. Really, although there was danger to Edith, there was nothing in the way of them getting married. There was no attempts at love, difficulties in the formation of their attachment or really anyone trying to argue against their marriage (themselves included). It was kind of nice to not have to worry about one or the other making stupid decisions in an attempt to be “good”. After all, that does get a little old after a while.
From the beginning, I guessed that the villain in this story was probably going to be a woman. After all, it starts off with Edith being poisoned, and that tends to be a woman’s method of murder generally. Yet, it was really difficult to figure out exactly who that was going to be. Particularly when the red herring was so obviously a red herring and I just couldn’t figure out who else would have a motive… it was intriguing. And I seriously loved the moment of big reveal at the end of the story.
One of the things about this series that I love the most is that the person who is normally being horrible, running around killing everyone isn’t inherently evil. They’re jealous, or prejudiced, or in the case of the villain in this… kind of insane and seriously selfish. Actually, they’ve all been selfish so far. It’s a little bit more human and makes the final moments when the good guys win not such a great, amazing moment of joy, but just a little bit tragic and all the more intense.
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