Series: Scots of Honor, #4
Traits & Tropes: titled hero; spy; former soldier; mistaken identity
Publication Date: 08.16.22
Genre/Setting: Historical; Regency; 1817 London/Edinburgh
Heat Level: 1.5
Rating: 3.5/5
After working to secure a vital state secret, Captain Malcolm Gordon, also the Earl of Dunlyon, is in a rush to send the information to his superior in London, but before he’s made it much past Edinburgh, he’s shot by an innocent-seeming lady.
Miss Olivia Aston is appalled that her shot missed the boar she was aiming for and hit a man instead, but she’s thankful he’s still alive. Her father can’t stand the Scots and will likely bar her from society permanently if he learns of her latest blunder, so she must find a more clandestine way of helping the man.
Malcolm wakes to discover that the information he’d managed to attain has been stolen and he has no idea where his attacker fled or how his wound came to be stitched. He has no time to investigate and must instead hurry to London, where he learns that the information he gathered has already been compromised. Now to sniff out a traitor, Malcolm must take his place in high society, unwittingly bringing him face to face with his lovely assailant and beginning a flirtation that could prove fatally distracting from his mission.
This was a quick and entertaining read, nothing especially groundbreaking, but a solid story, nonetheless. Malcolm is at first very much blinded by his assumptions that Olivia must be a counterintelligence operative working against him, and later on his burgeoning feelings for her blind him to the fact that she’s innocent and delay his identification of the true culprit a bit. Olivia is a bit clueless and dramatic, but I liked the fact that she never shied away from her feelings for Malcolm, even when she worried that he intended to see her imprisoned, and she always stood up to her parents for him. Speaking of her parents, they were pretty awful, especially her petty mother, and we never got down to the bottom of her father’s fierce dislike of all things Scottish. I think I would’ve been more forgiving of them, and it might’ve made for a more well-rounded story if this had at least been touched on. I'm still not entirely sure how Olivia and Malcolm fell in love given that they only spent fleeting snatches of time together, but I found myself largely unbothered by this. The mystery element here was enough to keep me entertained but it was wrapped up in a rather rushed manner and I wanted more comeuppance on the page for the villains, rather than them just being arrested and taken away without being revisited in the text or having. All told, this was a solid story and I enjoyed reading a Highlander hero set in the Regency time period.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/1719406235
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5364027029
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