Captured by the Highlander (Highlander, #1)

by Julianne MacLean

[celinenyx]

Confession time: I never read straight up romance. I've been an action/fantasy kind of girl for as long as I could remember, and even when I do read something that's clearly romance-focussed, I make sure it at least has a setting that I can focus on. I picked Captured by the Highlander up out of curiosity. I love the Highlands, I love Scotland, and I love history. And it's good to branch out now and then, right?

Lady Amelia awakes with a bulky highlander standing over her, that has come to kill her fiancée. Instead he decides to take her for a prisoner. As his prisoner Amelia discovers a lot about her fiancée that makes her reconsider her decisions and values.

I got into Captured by the Highlander without any prejudices, ready to be entertained. At first I was. Although I found it weird how Duncan the highlander manages to cut up Amelia's clothes in the first ten pages without Amelia feeling violated in any way, I suspended my disbelief. When he grinds against her leg with his discostick twenty pages after that while she is "aroused against better judgement", I was still fine. But when they started solving their problems by having sex about half-way through the book, I got very bored and disappointed with this book.

I don't care how hot your Scottisch boyfriend/English girlfriend is. Sex doesn't make your relationship problems go away.

I found Amelia and Duncan's relationship terribly weird, especially towards the end. I was fine with them falling in lust within the space of a few days, and although I though Amelia was too stupid to live and Duncan needed a good smack in his face a few times, I was entertained and happy. But about half-way the story loses steam. The attraction between them gets resolved, and the only "hurdle" they have to overcome is one that insures them their happily ever after. There is no struggle though, nothing that wanted me to root for them. The main problem basically gets solved by changing nothing, but by the same old "oh I can live with that because I luuuurrrrve you". That's not a solution in my opinion, and I didn't think I needed to read three-hundred pages to get to that conclusion.

So, Captured by the Highlander wasn't for me. I think this story was better told in a novella-length, instead of a full length book. There just wasn't enough story to keep me entertained once the novelty wore off.