I Do

Rating:
Summary: charming historical
Review: In 1883 Dorcas Jeffries wonders if she may have taken employee loyalty too far as she gazes on the fifteenth century plus or minus a hundred years adobe built Scottish castle in West Texas. Dorie agreed to temporarily stand in for her boss Lady Flora MacAllister in a wedding ceremony with Angus MacAllister. This gave Flora time to run off into the sunset with the man she loves.

Angus, as the laird of the Texas branch of the MacAllister clan, knows he must set the example for the others so he had agreed to this arranged marriage. So to him the bride's identity is not important that is until he falls in love with his wife. Dorie is not only shocked to learn she is married as she thought the exchange of vows was the rehearsal, but even more stunning she is falling in love with her spouse though rumors persist he killed his first wife.

Moving Highland Scotland to Texas has been done in other works, but not as completely as this charming historical does it with its brick and all keep. The story line contains plenty of action, but the lead characters drive the plot as Angus does his duty as the clan head and Dorcas wonders how love entered the looking glass she fell through. Though much heavier on the Scottish accent than on the clash of cultures, readers will enjoy this fine late nineteenth century romance.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: charming historical
Review: In 1883 Dorcas Jeffries wonders if she may have taken employee loyalty too far as she gazes on the fifteenth century plus or minus a hundred years adobe built Scottish castle in West Texas. Dorie agreed to temporarily stand in for her boss Lady Flora MacAllister in a wedding ceremony with Angus MacAllister. This gave Flora time to run off into the sunset with the man she loves.

Angus, as the laird of the Texas branch of the MacAllister clan, knows he must set the example for the others so he had agreed to this arranged marriage. So to him the bride's identity is not important that is until he falls in love with his wife. Dorie is not only shocked to learn she is married as she thought the exchange of vows was the rehearsal, but even more stunning she is falling in love with her spouse though rumors persist he killed his first wife.

Moving Highland Scotland to Texas has been done in other works, but not as completely as this charming historical does it with its brick and all keep. The story line contains plenty of action, but the lead characters drive the plot as Angus does his duty as the clan head and Dorcas wonders how love entered the looking glass she fell through. Though much heavier on the Scottish accent than on the clash of cultures, readers will enjoy this fine late nineteenth century romance.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: "A quirky love story to go quietly mad for..."
Review: Temporarily switching places with a reluctant bride-to-be (out of pure, thoughtless philanthropy so her dreamy-eyed employer, Flora MacAllister, can elope with her one true love) has landed erstwhile lady's companion, Dorcas Jeffries, within the walls of a not-so-ivory tower of a medieval Scottish castle...Dug, if you can believe it, into the dusty soil of west Texas, and home to the MacAllister Clan, where ancient traditions -- such as handfasting -- are legally binding, apparently.

And where little things like kidnapping and holding one prisoner against one's will are perversely overlooked when the Clan's half Comanche laird, Alan, is in need of a wife. Any wife, be her name Florrie or Dorie, never mind such niggling details as obtaining one's consent or listening to the prospective bride's prettily couched pleas for freedom. Fortunately, escaping from her unwanted prison is as straightforward -- ahem -- as crawling out a window, climbing down a tree, and jumping into the arms of the very man she's trying to escape from, with her dignity only slightly bruised as a result.

Dorcas is under the impression that her savior is someone other than an addle-brained bedlamite from Clan MacAllister, however, since she's unaware of Laird Alan's Comanche heritage -- though her ignorance isn't particularly long lasting. Alan, it would seem, is actually in agreement with his uncle Angus for once, and is quite smitten with the lass's frilly undergarments, green eyes and blond curls. It doesn't take him long to decide that he'll keep Dorcas -- under lock and key, if necessary -- and take the bonny lass to wife...If he can just get his affairs in order, put a few ghosts to rest, and steal more than a passionate kiss or two from a stubbornly resistant Dorcas.

Holy Brigadoon, it's a Scottish invasion! Aye, complete with an adobe castle smack dab in the middle of Texas, a dank dungeon (though there be no dragons here), kilts aplenty (and the odd loin cloth or two), and antiquated Highland laws which put a forward-thinking American girl in a vat full of beer-tainted trouble. Sounds like crazy, madcap fun, doesn't it? In fact, I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that Mimi Riser's debut novel for Dorchester Publishing is the most innovative and strangely creative, genre-bending hybrid of romantic fiction I've come across in a good, long while.

A comedy/gothic/western romance, I DO is a novel that will tickle your funny bone as well as your imagination with its twists, turns and terrifically thrilling - in a guilty pleasure sort of way - plot developments. Yes, it can be a chore to decipher the MacAllisters heavy, Scottish brogue, but dinna think these bits and pieces of dialogue will tax ye overmuch, as they're not ever present. 'Tis also true that Alan is something of an enigmatic, close-mouthed hero whom we gradually get to know better, although we're never actually allowed to venture inside of his head. (Hence the man's enigmatic qualities and wonderfully gothic, oh-so mysterious, inscrutability, I daresay).

Ms. Riser's occasional tendency to jump ahead of her readers is a wee bit of a more serious complaint, however. Thankfully, it's an infrequent phenomenon...for the most part, at any rate. There are a few conversations that take place out of a reader's range of hearing, you see, and are suddenly referred to in the narrative, explaining some as-of-yet undisclosed revelation or another. So if you find yourself suddenly doing a double take and thumbing back a few pages, all will be made clear in relatively short order, never fear. We can't all be as quick on the uptake as feisty, spirited Dorcas, after all, who's an almost eighteen-year-old marvel of female ingenuity, smarts and spit-in-your-face defiance.

The byplay between Ms. Riser's hero and heroine is very much rooted in the ol' love/hate mentality, where passions (and sometimes, tears) flow freely, and one is treated to a jolly good show of fireworks, romantic sparks, and the furious clashing of competing wills. A secondary romance -- which is left completely up in the air, by the way -- promises to be equally entertaining, I'd wager, as this Western flavored, fly-in-the-face-of-convention, gothic toned romance. As a matter of fact, I hereby declare Mimi Riser an author to watch, and her wickedly amusing, impossible-to-categorize novel, I DO, a quirky love story to go quietly mad for...Er, in a purely metaphorical sense, of course.