In Bed with a Highlander - Maya Banks (McCabe Trilogy #1)

I'm not a huge "highlander" romance fan, but I've read a few of them this year in hopes of fulfilling this category for the Unapologetic Romance Readers 2017 Reading Challenge.  Unfortunately for me, every time I read one, it seemed to fit another category better, and so I had to keep searching.  I'm finally calling it off with this one!

The story is about Mairin Stuart, who is apparently a bastard princess whose heir will inherit huge, wealthy holdings in Scotland.  Consequently, everyone wants to marry her.  She's been hiding out in a convent for ten years, but the book starts with her being discovered by the men of one Duncan Cameron, who intends to force her to marry him.  When she refuses, she's badly beaten, but manages to escape his clutches with the help of a maid and a boy she saves from being killed by Cameron's men. The boy, of course, ends up being the heir of another clan, who gets his father to promise to protect Mairin--and then promptly marries her.  The two scream and fight and Mairin tries to run away before they get married, but as soon as the vows are said, they're pretty much gaga over each other and spend most of the book having sex while Mairin makes charming mistakes in being the lady of a highland clan.  There's a flimsy subplot going on here with Duncan Cameron trying to get Mairin back, and someone trying to kill one of the couple, but it's mostly shoe-horned into the end of the book.  There's also a lot of Scottish history (I think) that's required to understand it, so if you're not familiar with Scottish royal genealogy in the early twelfth century, it's all a bit murky.

I honestly wasn't a fan of the writing, either; there's a lot of "aye"-ing being done, and I didn't feel that Mairin and Ewan had any chemistry at all.  Honestly, his brothers were more interesting characters, but I didn't like this book enough to pursue the other two with them as heroes, because the writing is just...flat.  The sex scenes aren't sexy, the bickering doesn't have any tension in it, and then there's the lackluster plot that's supposedly propping the whole book up.  Overall, it's just "meh," and I don't see myself reaching for this author again in the future.

2 stars out of 5.