Joana Vieira Varela
- Sinalizar como inapropriado
I received an eARC at no cost from the author. Devil in Tartan is the fourth book on the Highland Grooms series, by Julia London. Having read the first three books, it’s impossible not to make comparisons between them. Sadly, for me, this was my least favourite book. It had an interesting premise, and I liked Aulay, but I just couldn’t connect with Lottie. Lottie is described as strong, courageous, fearsome woman, but even if she was trying to do her best to save the (illegal) family business, she just didn’t act nor did justice to her descriptions. She was, no doubt, intelligent enough to use her pretty face to fool men, but that didn’t make me like her more – it actually made me like her less. And Aulay, although I did like him more than Lottie, he too was a bit of an empty character. He was a painter, which I liked, but felt it wasn’t explored enough. I liked that Julia London mentioned his role in the family, how he felt, because that made me connect with him more, but it just felt like it was lacking something. I liked revisiting characters from the previous books, but it was for such a short while that it wasn’t enough to save the book from a simple 3 star rating. I just couldn’t connect with the characters as much as in the previous books, and I felt that with both Lottie’s crew and Aulay’s crew always around it felt a bit too crowded and there were too many characters (and sometimes I even got confused with who was whom – and I read the book in just two days, and rarely get lost in these books, but with this one it was hard to remember all the minor characters). Julia London’s writing isn’t being put in question here, she was as good as always, I just felt like she tried to put too much in one book and ended up not focusing enough on what was really necessary. Still, it was a different read, and I managed to enjoy parts of it.