Overall: 4.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖📖 
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋  
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔 
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡ 
Romance: 💞💞💞💞 
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋💋 
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑 
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥 
Humor: Yes!

Should I read in order? 
Yes, and you should start with her Rescued From Ruin series. I picked this one up, and it was enjoyable, but there is character overlap from the previous series, and out hero in this book, John Huxley, has a number of sisters that are married in that series with their own stories. I found myself wishing I had started there.

Basic plot:
John is fixing up his Scottish estate and locked in a property dispute with a stubborn Scot that refuses to budge. He challenges him to win the Highland Games and he’ll get what he wants. Annie agrees to train him if he will teach her to be a lady – she’s desperate to save her friend and marrying a lord is a necessity for her.

Give this a try if you want:
- 1825 Scotland setting (Glenscannadoo)
- Hero/heroine bargain – John will teach Annie to be a lady if she helps train him for the Highland Games
- A very light touch of paranormal
- Medium steam – 3 full scenes but they are lengthy and developed, also some fade to black/remembered so it may feel hotter to you
- I felt like this was a slow burn, even though sex starts soon after 50% (could have just been my mood and interrupted reading of this book!)
- Hero loves first – he fights it a bit but once he decides it’s glorious
- Highlander heroine and English hero
- A bit of class difference feel
- Secret identity

Ages
- Hero is 34 and heroine is 24

My thoughts:
This book! I ended up LOVING it. I really struggled in the beginning. Life and just lots of interruptions I think really slowed the down the start for me. I kept putting it down and picking it up repeatedly. It felt a bit like the beginning was dragging for me and I kept moving on to other things instead. I started in January 29th and just finished so it took me over a month...

Well shame on me. 

Because when I sat down and gave it an honest chance I just fell more and more in love with it. Few books really bring it the second half for me. If I am not sold on a book by 40% or so it usually doesn’t happen. But it did here. 

I loved John as a hero. He was a bit standoffish at first – and you learn about why and his hurt later in the book. But I ended up enjoying how protective he was of Annie. He takes care of people – you can tell with his family and how much they love him and he shows it here – even before he has ties to Annie he repeatedly goes out of his way to do the right and good thing. I was worried at first we would have another hero that spent the book refusing to marry because of his past, but thankfully it took a complete 180 from that.

Annie was so unique. I really liked her spunk and her fearlessness. Despite being judged and bullied, she has such a big heart and cares for those around her. She still has her humor and her spark. 

I just really loved them together! This was one of those romances that I felt the love – so many I don’t really feel that. I believed their love, I am convinced as I close the book they go vibrantly into their HEA. I love when a story paints a clear picture of that for me.

I love how much food and cooking was mentioned in this one. I loved that Annie showed her love through food and the men she cooked for mentioned it many times. Even if a fit of jealousy, John wonders who’s she’s going to make bread and gravy for.

As far as the paranormal aspect goes – well I’ll admit it was a little weird at first. But towards the ending (I’ll go into details below under spoiler warning) I actually quite loved this part of the book.



Here’s a few random parts that I wanted to note from the book

Paranormal thoughts -
Okay so she loses her ghost friend and must marry a lord and have a baby so her ghost friend can be born as her child. I was not feeling this at all lol. But wow, as it went on, especially that conversation with Mrs. MacBean when she explained that Annie had assumed those things and he actually wasn’t a ghost – I got goosebumps. I am getting them again just thinking about it. And the ending with the dreams and the white raven – absolute perfection. I ended up LOVING IT!

One of the big conflicts of the book between them was when she realized he omitted to tell her he was a lord. I would have been a lot more mad and unforgiving about him completely disregarding my feelings and reasonings for wanting to marry a lord than omitting that detail – but that’s just me.


The moment the book finally caught my attention and heart.
<i>
“Enough,” he uttered. Before she could smirk, he moved into her, forcing her to stumble backward. Then, he braced her lower back and turned their positions until he could bracket her against the table.
Her eyes flared as he loomed. Leaned in. Brought their mouths within inches and let her feel the difference in their sizes.
(some skipped)
He couldn’t help himself. Crowding her closer until the folds of her plaid pressed flat against his coat, he lowered his head and watched pink bloom bright in her cheeks. “I am a man,” he murmured in her ear.
</i>

Yes! I need more of this. The longing for each other in little ways that drives up the tension but they don’t even have to touch each other.
<i>
As he adjusted his coat’s buttons, he wondered what smelled so good. He’d noticed in before when she was near. Had she been cooking something because she came? She smelled….sweet. Clean. He frowned. Was it apples? Honey? He leaned closer, breathing deep. Sugar? No, richer than sugar. More floral and golden. Caramel, perhaps?
Whatever it was, it made him hungry. Ravenous, even. His hands tightened on the wool until they formed fists. He swallowed then saw she was staring at his mouth. 
</i>

And this made my heart pitter patter
<i>
“Dinnae fash, English.” She flicked his coat’s lapel. “I’ll be gentle.”
With a swift motion, he trapped her wrist in his grip, dragging her close before encircling her waist and flattening her against him. “You think this is amusing.”
Amusing? Far from it. The sensation of being pulled tight against him shocked her sense. Stole her breath. Made her vision blur.
(some skipped)
The fingers of his free hand traced the top of her ear, sending shivers rippling across her skin. “You think you can ignore my warnings, laugh away the risk, and suffer no consequences.” He lowered his head until she felt hot, damp breath against her neck. “I understand why,” he whispered.
(some skipped)
“A gentleman seems to very harmless.”
(some skipped)
“When you’re alone with a man, nothing apart from his honor prevents him from taking what he disires.” His hand slip up from her waist to her breast. “Be it a touch.”
“Or a kiss.” He brushed his perfect lips across hers.
Suddenly, he grasped her thigh and raisted it alongside his. Then, with a practiced motion, he ground his hips inot hers, the hard ridge beneath his trousers taking the liberties he spoke of.
</i>

And Mrs. MacBean being hilarious
<i>
“Ah, he had a silver tongue, that John Brodie. Separated me from my virtue more than once, I can tell ye that.”
How a woman could surrender her virtue more than once, he didn’t know – and didn’t want to.
“’Twas when he brought out the butter and the honey jar, I said, ‘Och, no, ye scoundrel. The sixteenth time will be the last, by heaven.”
</i>

This made me sad. The gut clench at the thought of marriage – later I understood it better. His background and that he did want her, it was his hurt that makes him hesitate. But still I was like You butthole! lol
<i>
His ring? Cold flooded his body. No. He didn’t want a wife. He especially didn’t want one as frustrating and fiery and foul-mouthed as…
Annie. There she stood, chin tilted and cornflower eyes flashing.
</i>

Loved as he starts to fall for her wholeheartedly
<i>
At night, the craving had transformed into dreams so erotic, he’d become desperate to have them end – equally desperate to have them return. In the past, finding a willing woman to manage his needs had been simple. Women liked him. Always had. A playful grin, a bit of flattery. Easy.
Now, nothing made him grin but her. 
Nothing made him hard but her.
Nothing made him want but her.
</i>
 
Ahhh jealous – that toxic emotion that I adore
<i>
Would she accept a doddering, toothless man? A cruel, witless fool? He’d seen women marry worse to become a countess or baroness or marchioness. Who would Annie allow to touch her? Who would she let rut between her thighs, gurnting and huffing and sweating as he planted an heir in her belly? Who would she make fat on her bread and gravy? Who would she -
“Careful, Hux,” murmered Robert. “You’re going to shatter that glass.”
</i>


And here is when I really started falling for this book – yes! Yes! Stop the I can never marry again because someone hurt me. Go after her.
<i>
She mattered. He wanted her. Not for an hour. Not for a week.
Forever.
He wanted her in his kitchen. He wanted to watch those pretty hands making bread. He wanted her here in his study, teasing him about his fine manners and finer tea. He wanted to hear her pleasured cries echoing off the new paneling in his bedchamber. Feel her hair brushing his skin. Watch her cornflower blue eyes go soft then flow like blue fire. 
He wanted his child in her belly.
His heart pounded, pulsing in his skin. Oh, God. Yes that was it.
Annie swollen with his child. His ring upon her pretty finger. His claim fully made. 
She’d be his wife.
Bloody hell. She could be his.
</i>

Again, yes I eat this up in romance!
<i>
Nothing compared with those enchanting hazel eyes, the ones that now flared wide and raked her from head to two before settling on her bosom. Lingering. And lingering. And stroking. And lingering. His chest heaved on a breath. His cravat moved as he swallowed.
</i>

Mmmm yes 
<i>
Suddenly, she was bent in half with her belly over his shoulder. He lifted and hauled her four paces to the bed, then tossed her like a bag of tatties onto the mattress. She bounced and oophed.
“Marry me,” he rasped.
(some skipped)
“I’m going to marry you. And you’re going to sleep here in my bed. You’re going to cook for me, woman.”
</i>


WHY DID SHE SKIP OVER THE BLOWJOB??? I wanted that to be a full scene, not a remembered paragraph.

Content Warnings:

Bullying
Judgments about mental health
Animal fur referenced with clothing
Violence, torture, death on page/remembered
Rape remembered – hero was raped when he was 16 by a governess in the house

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

27% - light kiss and fondling
55% 🔥 - kisses against a wall leading to a fingering orgasm for heroine
61% - kiss
64% 🔥 - kisses, breast play to orgasm, another with fingers and mouth, then full sex – missionary
76% 🔥 - fingering for her, against the door sex followed immediately by her on top, then missionary
79% - remembered sex – blow job, her on top and him on top in carriage – about 2 paragraphs
87% - alluded to sex