somewhere in tessa dare's WHEN A SCOT TIES THE KNOT, the hero is discussing how best to woo his wife with the men he led in war. there's a lot of suggestions being made, some more reasonable than others (were i the maddie of this book, the hamming up of the scottish accent that one of them suggests certainly would have worked on me), but one man suggests this:

“She wants your secrets. She wants your soul. You've got to crack yourself open and find that broken, shameful piece of your heart that you'd hide from the world and God Himself if you could manage it. And then serve it up to her on a platter.”

i think that, at the end of the day, what many of these old school historicals are missing for me is this element: the scene where the hero bares his soul to the heroine. it's the ultimate humbling, to offer up the worst of yourself to the person you'd least like to see it, and hope that they're still standing there when you look back up at them. because a lot of these books seem to have impenetrable heroes who remain relatively impenetrable, the emotional connection between them (and thus with the reader) just isn't there for me.

and when it comes down to it, this book was fine. but honestly, if it wasn't a fated mates episode i definitely wouldn't have read the whole thing. my copy is 405 pages and it feels like 405 pages. it was not a quick read for me. is there a lot of weird power dynamics going on that we'd side-eye in a book now? yeah, definitely. does it hold up pretty well for a book published 30 years ago? i'd say so.

for me, the standout characters were thomas and jeremy, georgie's brother and james's son, respectively. if this was being written today, i'd absolutely be pushing for them to end up together because they are respectful and calm kings!!! alas this is a completed series, and it doesn't look like thomas ever got a book :(

i wouldn't be surprised if i ended up returning to this series one day, but i'm not really in a rush