The King (of England) has sent his cousins, Saeren and Blaine Sinclair, to Scotland to be wed. In hope of brokering peace, he insists that one of the girls must marry Kane Shaw, the Lion of the Highlands, and the other girl must marry Lord Grayham. One is reputed to have murdered his wife and sister, the other to have murdered (or driven to suicide) his three previous wives.

The girls agree to a charade - Blaine, who is adored by men, will sacrifice herself, marrying The Lion, but Saeren, who Blaine believes is barren, sure to be the death of her if either prospective husband found out, will disguise herself as a boy and offer herself to work as The Lion's squire.

If you take out the editing errors (which are so easily fixed, come on people!), and fix two the two plot holes that bothered me (the disguise wasn't strong enough to withstand scrutiny, and the King claimed to love his cousins but sentenced at least one of them to a marriage that was likely to end in her death), the writing was very good. This author has huge potential, and I wouldn't be afraid of trying out her future work. I actually enjoyed the book, despite everything, and even if it was purely edited with no changes to the storyline, I would have given it four stars. The editing really let it down. But editing is such a simple thing to fix (which is what makes it so frustrating when you get books like this one!) that I think it is a disservice to write off this author. On the whole, the writing was well done, and it drew the reader in. The characters were excellently fleshed out - Saeren, Kane, Blaine, Broderick and Connor were all so well crafted that I could describe them to you now as if they were real people. Even Fergus and his craftiness made me smile. So don't give up on the author, or indeed the book, because of the issues with it. I couldn't give it more stars when it was so poorly edited, and needed work, but I did enjoy it, and it has huge potential.

This book was very poorly edited. It appeared that someone had run it through a spell checker, as every word was technically a correctly spelled word, just not the right word. There instead of their, she instead of he, a part instead of apart, and so on and so forth. Many of the errors were blindingly obvious and would have been clear if someone had bothered to read through for errors.

More frustrating though was the lack of consistency. First we are told that Blaine is very thin as is fashionable at court, and Saeren is voluptuous which makes her less appealing, especially in Blaine's opinion. Later, it is Blaine who is chubby, and Saeren is very slim. It changes back and forth, and I honestly had no idea which sister looked like what. Also, there were occasions where the wrong names were used, such as Connor when it was in fact Kane - easy to figure out but distracting.

There were a couple of significant holes in the plot. Firstly - Saeren bound her breasts, wore men's clothes, and cut her hair to shoulder-length, but that was the extent of her disguise. No, I lie, she did put dirt on her face and wear a cap. She did not use a deep voice, change her walk, personality, or anything. We are given absolutely zero indication of any further attempt to make herself appear masculine. So why, when Kane comes to know her in her female form under a pseudonym of Alice, does he not recognise her? She has the same voice, same hair, same face... I understand why he might not at first realise that Alice and Saeren were the same person, but after he has spent a long ride with Alice and kissed her endlessly, does he not then recognise her when she dresses as Saeren again? I needed more in order to suspend my disbelief. I understand the concept of 'seeing what you expect to see' and all that, but the disguise needed to be more convincing to, well, convince me.

Also, what's up with the King? He tells everyone who listens that these are his adored cousins, yet he insists that they marry these ruthless men? Even if he knows (as we learn) that The Lion would never hurt a woman, Lord Grayham is appalling and I wouldn't wish him on my worst enemy. And we are clearly led to believe that he intends for Saeren, who is sweet and innocent, to go to Lord Grayham. That is not a man who loves his cousin. No way. I understand that he was a king and therefore ruthless and political and all that, but it seemed like the author believed that the king loved his cousins, and that was what made me think 'Something's not right here'. It just didn't fit.

And finally, a girl as sheltered and innocent as Saeren does not take aggressive control of her first sexual encounter. We'll ignore the multiple orgasms for a newly non-virgin as this is standard in romance novels, despite being totally unrealistic. And then on her second-ever sexual encounter, she is 69ing like a pro. Yeah, I so didn't buy that, sorry.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of The Highlander's Touch   from Amazon.Com!

Created Jan 19, 2016 at 7:30pm • Submit your own review...