This gets a star from me for the honourable Highlander guy plus marriage of convenience. But that’s it.

The rest was all pretty meh…
▪️ the mid-16th century setting was giving more late-18th century-ish? (emphasis on the ish). There was nary a bonnet to be seen, let alone a French hood, and where all the puffed sleeves?
▪️ our heroine was Mary Sue-ing it up a bit too much for me 
▪️ was that a mystery subplot?
▪️ I don’t think this couple was particularly compatible. They were too similar; both giving stern eldest sibling with a dash of withholding information
▪️ there was remarkably little on-page falling in love. I guess we were more focused on that mystery plot…
▪️ and the thing I disliked most was how the expository dialogue was… definitely expositing. We were putting important story beats in the mouths of characters a bit too ham-fistedly for me

Also didn’t help that the audiobook narrator read the FMC like the guy who plays Pippin in LOTR 🙈

Also also, I don’t know anything about Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But other reviews mentioned this book was a retelling of that… and this is the second much-beloved book compared to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers that I didn’t enjoy. So it’s probably just a me-thing.