Highland Wedding by Hannah Howell

2 stars

While this book was very well-written, I didn’t like it at all. I found it too heavy for me, with a very large dose of realisticness. My inner critique says that that is what made the story so amazing, but my inner hopeless romantic hated that it was like that. I want a sweet, fluffy story that will pull me into its world. It’s not that I don’t want my characters to be perfect; imperfection is good, I love imperfections, but I don’t want those imperfections to be things like cheating (the hero almost having sex with his ex-love, WHILE HE’S MARRIED) and having less-than-platonic thoughts about your husband’s friend (heroine curious about knowing what having sex with Alexander would feel like).

Before these two events, I swear, I loved this book SO MUCH. I was LITERALLY laughing with joy. It was because of the sweet beginning that this book gets an extra star. It started off exactly the way I want a book to start off; with the heroine and hero attracted to each other, the heroine half in love with the hero already, and the hero a tortured, brooding and cynical soul. But it went downhill from there.

I really hated how much of a coward whatshisface was being (I forget his name; I read it a couple of days ago) about childbirth, and I hated how he told the heroine that he wouldn’t have sex with her until she used the sponge (a contraceptive). While I loved him in the beginning, I really didn’t find him hero material at all. And this coming from a heroine-hater, a person WHO IS ALWAYS ON THE GUY’S SIDE NO MATTER WHAT.

I had no objection whatsoever to the heroine, just the fact that she *ahem* was curious about sex with Alexander, AFTER SHE WAS MARRIED. But seriously, she was so much better than the hero. AT LEAST SHE DIDN’T ACT UPON THE CURIOSITY, UNLIKE THAT WIMPY UNDESERVING HUSBAND OF HERS. She was the strong one in their marriage.

Now about the writing. Can I just say HOW AMAZING AN AUTHOR HANNAH HOWELL IS??? GOD, SHE IS JUST SUPERB. I don’t know why I waited so long to read her. The writing, the flow, the dialogue, was incredible. So very professional. She carried the story through with such a pleasing ease that it was a crying shame that I didn’t like the plot. Even the secondary characters were beautifully constructed. I might check out more of her books when I get in the mood.