Highland Scandal Book

Got bogged down halfway, what with all the "when the year is up I'm outta here talk between H/h. Background, discussed in depth elsewhere I'm sure, the H/h are by hook and crook hand-fasted for a year and forced to live as man and wife to satisfy her father for his own nefarious reasons. There was plenty of mutual antagonism between H/h, tho' he was less inflexible than she, but neither really rang my bells. And the chemistry felt off somehow.

I've read other Highland stories by JL and recall liking them so it could be this premise and how the 'romance' unfolded or failed to. H/h are working at cross purposes. Her goal was to marry well in London but after hand-fasting, she's damaged goods in the marriage mart; he's trying not to have his neck stretched by a vengeful Prince Regent convinced he might've had an affair with his wife (not true but others under suspicion have been hung for treason already). Her father holds his life in his hands. Hero has the incentive and pressure to fulfill the father's demands that the hand-fasting be real, she doesn't give a shit who she hurts, she's not going to cooperate.

Sigh. Hero's not that big a shit to deserve her attitude. How they end up in love I'll never know because there wasn't a hint of it halfway into the damned book. And I didn't much like the heroine. I did like the heroine's paralyzed sister and her guard Newton. That was a sweet, sincerely touching romance. But very tertiary.