Highland Fling

Rating:
Summary: She's done so much better
Review: Katie Fforde's work is generally so much better than this annoying effort. The heroine's choices make NO sense, her motivations are childish in the extreme, and the whole book seems sloppy. Fforde's editor needs to work a little harder.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific Tartan Tale
Review: When Katie Fforde is "on," nobody can reel you in like she can. And "Highland Fling" s the best she has written in years.

As always, the plot is pure fluff, and we know from page one that the lead character, a gritty Brit, will save the day. In this book, our heroine is particularly likeable: a thirtysomething, thoroughly modern Londoner who, after being dumped from her dot-com job, has become a "virtual assisant." In that role, she uses her accounting and business skills to analyze weak businesses for her Internet boss, whom she has never met in person. The job suits her, and apparently suits him too, as she is well paid for her efforts.

As the book opens, Jenny is leaving her impossibly boring and stodgy live-in boyfriend, Henry, for the North country--the Scottish Highlands, where she is being sent to investigate a failing family-owned woollen mill. Secretly glad to get out from under Henry's patronizing wing, Jenny rides up north to tackle what she thinks will be a quick and dirty assignment--prove that the books are hopeless, report back to her boss, and drive home before he closes the mill out from under the family and local employees.

But it doesn't qute work out that way. Jenny is drawn into the bosom, so to speak, of the Dalmain family--owners of the mill--whose dowager mother lives very much in the 19th century, whose "laird," the eldest son, is dating a barmaid, and whose daughter, a spinster in her domineering mother's eyes, is a psychological mess. Jenny gets drawn into the drama, and in no time, is up to her eyeballs in llamas and alpacas as she tries to save the mill.

Oh--there's also a tall, handsome, and impossibly rude stranger who brings out all the worst in Jenny...what is Ross Grant doing in Scotland, and why does he make her want to jump out of her skin? I can say no more.

As the Brits would say, "Well done, Katie!" This is great fun, and a great read. Pick it up and see for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific Tartan Tale
Review: When Katie Fforde is "on," nobody can reel you in like she can. And "Highland Fling" s the best she has written in years.

As always, the plot is pure fluff, and we know from page one that the lead character, a gritty Brit, will save the day. In this book, our heroine is particularly likeable: a thirtysomething, thoroughly modern Londoner who, after being dumped from her dot-com job, has become a "virtual assisant." In that role, she uses her accounting and business skills to analyze weak businesses for her Internet boss, whom she has never met in person. The job suits her, and apparently suits him too, as she is well paid for her efforts.

As the book opens, Jenny is leaving her impossibly boring and stodgy live-in boyfriend, Henry, for the North country--the Scottish Highlands, where she is being sent to investigate a failing family-owned woollen mill. Secretly glad to get out from under Henry's patronizing wing, Jenny rides up north to tackle what she thinks will be a quick and dirty assignment--prove that the books are hopeless, report back to her boss, and drive home before he closes the mill out from under the family and local employees.

But it doesn't qute work out that way. Jenny is drawn into the bosom, so to speak, of the Dalmain family--owners of the mill--whose dowager mother lives very much in the 19th century, whose "laird," the eldest son, is dating a barmaid, and whose daughter, a spinster in her domineering mother's eyes, is a psychological mess. Jenny gets drawn into the drama, and in no time, is up to her eyeballs in llamas and alpacas as she tries to save the mill.

Oh--there's also a tall, handsome, and impossibly rude stranger who brings out all the worst in Jenny...what is Ross Grant doing in Scotland, and why does he make her want to jump out of her skin? I can say no more.

As the Brits would say, "Well done, Katie!" This is great fun, and a great read. Pick it up and see for yourself.