Amanda
Written on Apr 7, 2016
The instalove between Malcolm and Mary, for one. For a romance novel, instalove is always a hard trope to handle because a) it has to be believable and b) there has to be outside interference to keep them apart.
In this case, Malcolm takes one look at Mary and knows she's the one. Something about the look in her eye or how she acts. Not quite as believable as I would have liked. Mary falls pretty fast too, but only because Malcolm unleashes a side of her she's has to hide. It might have been fine if the book's sole focus had been on their specific love story.
Instead, The Stolen MacKenzie Bride tells a much broader tale about the Scottish uprising and how Malcolm and Mary's story fits in. Pulling the focus away from Malcolm and Mary made it confusing about the end point the story was moving toward.
It wasn't the usual points of most romance novels, and without a clear end point, it lacked tension to push the book forward. (Which made the book easy to put down.) Especially when the events of the book span quite a long time frame, skipping over long periods of time, resulting in more summaries than I usually prefer.
Despite that, it was interesting to visit another time frame. It rather makes me want to reread the entire series now.