WILD WICKED SCOT

A young woman must choose between loyalty to her father and loyalty to her husband, but she decides not to be a pawn in men’s power games anymore.

Miss Margot Armstrong was just a boy-crazy teenager when her father announced his intention to marry her off to the Scottish Chieftan, Arran Mackenzie. Both Arran and her father would gain political influence from the alliance, and nothing Margot said could sway her father. After all, as Margot knew all too well, “women existed to be bedded and impregnated.” But after a few disastrous months as Arran’s wife, living on his isolated estate with no one but his unfriendly clan for company, Margot fled back to her father’s estate in the north of England. She spent three empty years going to parties and gambling until the political machinery of the early 18th century churned again, and once again Margot was caught in the middle. Her father ordered her back to Scotland, this time to determine whether Arran was plotting against the English crown. But instead of the indifferent husband she expected to find there, Margot soon realized that Arran was just as confused about their union as she was, just as much a victim of her father’s political machinations. London’s (Suddenly Dating, 2016, etc.) new Highland Grooms series will be well worth following if this first novel is any indication; she achieves something very difficult in a genre that often follows a formula—a suspenseful plot with an unpredictable conclusion. Both Margot and Arran grow as people during the course of the story and learn to build a marriage on something more than noble titles and valuable land.

An absorbing read from a novelist at the top of her game.