Dang, a three star rating really does not capture the fire that this book lit in me. Because time travel romance?? I’m now obsessed!

All of the bowing hand-kisses of a historical romance, plus Scottish brogue, plus.. can we agree that the ‘modern lady travels back in time and falls in love with a kilt and bandolier wearing guy’ story is similar to the ‘human lady abducted from earth falls in love with a barbarian alien guy’ story? 

Obviously this trope is perfect for me.

The time travel trope, plus how hot Jamie Fraser—sorry, Colin MacKinnon 😅—was, made this an addictive and enjoyable read!

But, I wish we’d made more hay with the culture clash. I don’t think historical accuracy is an end in itself, but I do like when historical accuracy increases the drama. Some historical elements were off—with the result that our heroine settled in too easily to life in the past. Plus the romance plot felt modern, when it could have been bonkers (bonkers is better).

I was ready to forgive the modern-feeling historical times because the tone of the book was giving me fun and campy, ‘don’t think about it too hard.’ But then it had (kinda randomly, I thought) some of the darkest plot stuff… like child r-word-ist baddies, a homicidal triad baddy, a dark triad r-wordy baddy (did we need that many baddies?). I feel like we could have skipped the narrated flashbacks that made even more of the badness on-page... If everything about this book had been realistically dark and gritty, then that would have worked. But it didn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the story, imo.

But it’s a testament to how entertaining the time travel was—not to mention how hot our historical hero was—that I had as good of a time as I did with this one.