Initially, despite loving Scottish historical novels, I didn't download this one, as it was some 300 pages long, but I didn't have much to read and decided to go for it, and I wasn't disappointed. Before I knew it I was on page 104, and it felt as if the tale had only just started. It is fairly heavy on utterances of God's wishes, the Almighty, living a Christian life, but not in an overtly preachy way at all; it was all simply in line with the era in which the novel is set, but Faith questions do appear at the end of the novel, which I did avoid. It is written with Scottish brogue, so I did find it a touch hard to understand some of the dialogue, but that's something that most novels set in this time-period in Scotland feature.
It's a tale that's fairly typical of olde Scotland, where to try to avoid clan feuds, from a very young age, a female from one clan is betrothed to a male from the feuding/rival clan, but that's just part of it...
We get to meet Akira, who's just been jilted by her fiance Gregor, as the night before their nuptials, he's had a premonition via a dream, in which he's been shown that Akira is not for him, so he leaves her at the altar. They are childhood friends who had been marrying for convenience and so it's no great loss for her, but before she can gain her wits, she's being abducted by Bryce MacPhearson, the middle son of his late clan-chief father, who is honouring his father's dying wish by taking her to wed the new clan chief, his older brother Evan. Though Akira is feisty and skilled in fighting, she agrees to go with Bryce to avoid bloodshed, and to try for peace between their clans.
When they reach the MacPhearson settlement, Evan is not pleased to see his brother or to be presented with an abducted fiancee, as he had refused to honour the betrothal made by their fathers (which is why Akira and Gregor had decided to wed). Unfortunately, Evan dies shortly after at the hands of Gregor, and it's his dying wish that Bryce becomes clan-leader, and Bryce announces that Akira will be his bride...but he tells her that he will not force her to be a true bride until she feels that she knows him well enough and wants more than just a marriage to prevent their clans from fighting...
I had suspected that Bryce had feelings for her, from the way in which he treated her during their journey to his clan, so this was no surprise, but the fact that he was a forward-thinking and reasonable man were. Other than the romance in this tale, there is feuding, fighting, there is a 'baddie' who does not want peace between the clans and murders follow, so much that even Akira's own family starts to doubt her, and Akira is revealed to be psychic, which makes the simple peasants view her with even more suspicion...
Yes, as I mentioned, there are references to God and to the bible and Akira's life is lived in accordance with biblical teachings, but this is in line with the era, so I had no issues with it. However, there is either a very obvious omission in this tale due to its Christian setting, or I must have missed a very important bit to do with the HEA (don't think so), but it's still a decent enough tale.
This is not the type of historical novel that I would normally read, as I like my historical male leads to be masterful, a touch arrogant, and 'lord of all he surveys', complete with passionate and sometimes un-PC lovemaking, so Bryce was an unexpected change. It was a romance of hearts, morals and minds, not at all the passionate, sexy steamy historicals such as those by Connie Mason, Nicole Jordan and Dawn Halliday, but I still liked it.
