Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖 (I was really into the beginning of this one, but then was able to set it down repeatedly and for long amounts of time in the second half)
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞 (I’m kinda conflicted here, because I thought some things were romantic and some were super not romantic 😆 )
Sensuality: 💋💋 (The scenes were written pretty light – I definitely wanted a bit more details, explicitness and emotional pull from them)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑 (varies, some were shorter)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: third person from hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: Immediately in the prologue, and then very soon into the main story
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after for the couple. The epilogue does leave off on a bit of a plot cliffhanger for the brother's story (book 2)
Epilogue: Yes – I’m not sure exactly how far in the future but a few years at least
Format: read an e-book version through my library (Hoopla)

He bore her against the wall with his body, cupped the back of her head in his hand, heedlessly crushing her bonnet, and brought his mouth down on hers, cutting off her protest in midsqueak, If this was a devil’s bargain, he was determined she would leave this cell knowing exactly which one of them was the devil.

Should I read in order?
This is the first in Medeiros’ Kincaid Highland series.

Basic plot:
Catriona needs assistance, and rescuing Simon from Newgate Prison and bringing him to Scotland is best solution...

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency – 1820
- England and Scotland settings
- imprisoned hero
- Gretna Green
- road trip romance
- ex-soldier hero
- unrequited love (from the heroine)
- medium steam – a few full scenes and some partials

Ages:
- Heroine is 20, hero is 24

First line:
A throaty feminine moan disturbed the cozy peace of the stable loft.

My thoughts:
I am so conflicted about this book! But, I did like it more than my first read through. I read this years ago and really disliked it. I just remember despising the hero.

In this read through, I really loved the first half of this book. I was eating up the unrequited love the heroine had, and the hero’s sassiness. He made some changes that I loved (like when he realized alcohol is causing unacceptable problems in his life and he gives it up) but at the same time, didn’t make enough by the end that I loved him. I still felt the relationship was unbalanced, and I didn’t believe in their happily ever after.
There was some humor here – some that really snuck on me and I adored and some that maybe wasn’t funny to me because the situations were so cringy.

I’m glad I gave it a reread, because I liked it more, but it’s not one I cherish or would reread.

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:Any mistakes/typos are my own

These kinds of thoughts from the hero halfway through the book bother me

After three endless, grueling days on the road, Simon was beginning to wish he was the sort of villain who could strangle a woman with his cravat, leave her body moldering in the forest, and waltz merrily away with all of her money. The looks he shot Catriona were growing increasingly murderous with each jolting, grinding turn of the cart’s wheels over the stony roads.
---
“Is there anything worth fighting for in your eyes? Anything worth dying for? Anything noble enough or dear enough to justify risking your precious neck?”
You.
The word rose from somewhere deep within his soul but never made it past his lips.
“No,” she said when he didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so. Well, in that case, I’m afraid I’m going to have to dismiss you.”
“Pardon?” he asked softly, feeling the edges of his temper growing dangerously frayed.
“You heard me the first time. You’re dismissed. Your services are no longer required. I’ll find my own way back to London, thank you very much, even if I have to walk every step of the way.”
Simon felt something within him grow deadly cold and hot all at the same time. “You owe me,” he said.
Shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite believe his audacity, she marched over to where Robert the Bruce’s chicken crate sat. It was fortunate the cat was not in residence at the moment because she heaved it upside down with a frustrated grunt and tugged at the bottom of the crate until it popped off to reveal a secret compartment.
She tore fat bundles of pound notes out of the compartment and hurled them at him until they rained down like confetti between them. “Take it! Take it all! Your half of the dowry. My half of the dowry. I don’t care anymore. You can spend it on your liquor and your gambling and your whores. I hope you squander every halfpenny of it and die of French pox in some opium den somewhere!”
Tossing the crate back to the ground, she turned and marched toward the archway.
Striding over the veritable fortune as if it were so much garbage beneath his bootheels, Simon caught up with her halfway to the archway, grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her around to face him.
Gazing deep into her started eyes, he said, “I wasn’t talking about the money.”
---
Catriona shook her head in dismay. “I can’t believe how thin these walls are.” An even more terrible thought struck her. “So if we had...would they have…?”
He nodded, eyeing her from beneath the decadent length of his lashes. “Every moan. Every sigh. Every syllable as you cried out my name and begged me to - “
She clapped a hand over his mouth. “What makes you think I would have been the one doing the begging?”
She felt him smile beneath her hand. Then he rolled, neatly reversing their positions so that she was imprisoned beneath the muscled length of his body. Lacing his fingers through hers, he pinned her hands on either side of her head. “Give me ten minutes of your time and I’ll show you.”
 

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- the prologue shows the hero trying to get with the heroine’s cousin sexually but they are interrupted (by the heroine)
- we have some body betrayed me vibes going on in this one – during some of the scenes the heroine is very ‘I must say no but I mean yes’ so there’s some possible elements of dubious consent here. We find out in one scene the heroine seems to be asleep but really she is awake and hoping for his kisses – so consent is definitely not explicit.
- there’s a brief scene of another woman trying to entice the hero to be with her sexually, but he brushes her off immediately
- some mild scenes of fighting and violence
- toxic parenting styles – the heroine is taken in by her uncle, who hides letters from her brother for years
- mention of murder

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: percentages might be off because I was reading on hoopla and kept changing my page size (so amounts of pages would vary)

 
Safe sex: 

  I don’t think it’s specifically stated but I believe no 

 
Hows the consent? 

  Definitely dubious in some parts – see content warnings. But generally good on the later scenes. 

 
Pregnancy/children in the story? 

  No pregnancy or children in the story, but children in the epilogue 

 
19% - kiss
26% - 🔥 fingering for her
42% - some dry humping
54% - kisses, fingering from her against a tree (interrupted)
56% - kiss
64% - 🔥 oral for her that leads to missionary followed by very short doggy scene the next morning
75% - fade to black sex