Desiring the Highlander Book

This book had sooooo much potential : strong, brooding, emotionally unavailable Highlander; smart, feisty, go-getter heroine, too bad it's bogged down in mind numbing narration and filler which totally kills the story :-/

Marketed as a love/hate theme, this doesn't last long and suddenly the h/h, Cole and Ellenor, become friends and then some. That's disappointing because the chase/build-up is dead in the water fast. Cole says he can't have anything to do with Elle for various reasons from his past but he doesn't really do anything to stay away and she's very available to him. She's also too clingy from the start -not quite the love/hate described on the back blurb. So plodding along through the book I guess you could excuse that part as the love story develops, unfortunately though there's so much additional crap that you forget where this love story actually is because the author has taken to focusing on him maybe becoming laird, his enemies, rebuilding the new clan castle blah blah blah. Nobody cares, where's the story about the relationship between the two people????

Another big problem is the alpha hero who's unsure of himself to the point where it's the heroine who has to take charge and tell him that he's the man for the job - a kind of "Little Engine that Could" encouragement. I like my heroes who know what they want and go and get it without pussy-footing around in uncertainty. It takes away from their "alphaness". That's a personal preference of course and many readers may enjoy a heroine who's stronger than the hero but not me. He's not a beta or anything but he's not the kind of alpha he's described as being.

There are too many pages of dense narration which reminded me of Monica McCarty's novels. If you like that kind of writing you'll likely enjoy this book. I don't like books that tell a story instead of showing it to you. They're arduous to read and you suddenly find yourself skimming paragraphs to get to the end instead of enjoying the story. The last 100 of pages or so of this book -that could've been edited out entirely-- I could barely skim read because it was so boring. There was the stereotypical bit of trouble near the end once the h/h got together which is so annoying because you expect it seeing as the author has nothing else to do with the characters. It's not a book that's well put together. It felt like the author didn't know how to end it so it wavered and then suddenly there's the syrupy epilogue, bang we're done.

If tight book binding irritates you then there's another reason not to pick up this book. The writing is too close to the spine that you really have to crack that baby open to read what's in the middle. At 400+ pages that's a headache because you just want to rip it in sections so you can actually read with some comfort being that the type is already quite small. Don't publishers think of these things????!

I love Highlander novels but it's one genre that is virtually impossible to find a decently written story apart from say Julie Garwood. Michele Sinclair is just another to cross off the list if her other books are like this one.