Becky (romantic_pursuing_feels)'s Reviews > Highlander's Captive

Note: Some of my goodreads shelves can be spoilers

Overall: 3.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: A bit
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine and also the side character Hamish
More character focused or plot focused? a mix? Maybe a bit more plot
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: Not too far in – the end of chapter 2 or about 11%
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, a few months later
Format: listened to the audiobook on audible
(Descriptions found at end of my review)

Should I read in order?
This is the first of Stone’s Called by a Highlander series.

Basic plot:
Amy falls through time and into a medieval castle in 1307 – what’s even worse is she is a MacDougall – Craig’s sworn enemy.

Give this a try if you want:
- Medieval (1307 I think?)
- Scotland setting
- time travel – highlander hero/contemporary heroine
- divorced heroine
- marriage of convenience – he gets an advantage in the war by marrying a MacDougall and she gets access to the whole castle instead of being a prisoner
- secret identity
- enemies to lovers-ish/rival families
- medium steam – 3 scenes

Ages:
- I don’t recall them being mentioned. If I had to guess, I’d think late 20s?

First line:
The fiery cross burned.

My thoughts:
I am so conflicted about this story!

On one hand, it had a lot I really enjoy in romance. I love the time travel aspect. I enjoyed the time period and the hero. I liked the heroine’s background and found it interesting that she did search and rescue due to her childhood.

But, I also found a lot of this story really slow. There were quite a few scenes of just castle life...peeling potatoes….having people not listening to you because you’re a MacDougall and I found it a bit frustrating. But what really got me was the ending. I didn’t love the ending and was a bit annoyed but especially with the hero.

(view spoiler)[ I did think it was weird that they found this ‘enemy’ MacDougall and never went through her bag/stuff to explore it? Never played with the flashlight or anything she brought with her??

I also hated that when the heroine finally opened up to the hero about who she truly was he then pooed on her and said he could never trust her and she needed to leave. Um what?! She explained she was scared for her life, she came in the middle of a battle through time travel – I was disgusted with the hero at that point that he would punish her for trying to protect herself and her identity in that situation. I would have been so angry! And so she goes back in time and then just decides to come back again because she loves him and he’s like actually I love you too and they live happily ever after. I was so annoyed with that part. It just felt like too easy of a wrap up after all that turmoil they put themselves through. (hide spoiler)]

I was also a bit confused how the heroine seemed to know how time travel worked – as in the passage of time. I guess she’s going off the Outlander version, but something that always kind of drives me nuts is when people go back and they assume the passage of time is exactly the same. This heroine was saying things like it’s been x amount of days/weeks so this will have happened and this happened back home and I’m just thinking how would you know that??? How would you know you couldn’t go right back to the time you left so it was like you were never gone? Sure it might work that way but I think some bit of wondering would have placated me instead of a solid presented idea of how time travel works just out of no where.


Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.
(view spoiler)[
- hero’s sister is kidnapped, raped and abused
- death, murder, and war on page
- death of a grandparent (on page)
- alcoholism (of a parent)
- murder on page (throat slit)
- heroine was abused/neglected as a child and locked in a barn for 2 nights starving with no water
- parental death mentioned
(hide spoiler)]

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:
(view spoiler)[
Safe sex: (view spoiler)[ No – they are married (hide spoiler)]
Hows the consent? (view spoiler)[ It’s good/implied (hide spoiler)]
Chapter 9 – kiss
Chapter 18 – kiss
Chapter 22 – 🔥 kisses in the stable, oral for her, missionary

“Look at me, lass,” he said.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. His gaze was dark and burning in the semidarkness of the stables. His eyebrows were bunched together, his lips parted, a little swollen. There was so much heat, so much promise in his eyes, she clenched again.
“Ye’re mine,” he said. “And I’m yers.”

Chapter 27 – 🔥 kisses, very short start to a bj, her on top

“Look at me,” he said. “I want ye to look at me as ye find yer release.”
Because he’d be looking at her, too.
Chapter 33 - 🔥 oral for her, doggy

“Aye, my sweet lass,” he said. “Take it in. Ye’re so beautiful.”

(hide spoiler)]

Extra stuff like what my review breakdown means, where to find me, and book clubs
(view spoiler)[

Full break down on what my ratings above mean here: (view spoiler)[
Overall: How I felt about it everything considered!
Readability: How ‘readable’ was the book? Did I fly through it? Did I have to tell myself to pick it back up repeatedly? Were any passages confusing? (I will probably score like (1) is literally unreadable due to formatting/typing errors, etc (2) There were lots of errors that made it difficult to read OR It was extremely confusing and I had to reread passages to make sense of it OR I disliked it so much I had to bribe myself to keep reading (3) I didn’t really want to keep reading and would have preferred to abandon the read and start something else OR some minor continuity issues/confusion (4) I liked it fine, maybe a minor error or 2. I was happy to pick it up when I had time. (5) I never wanted to put this down. I thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. I hid in the bathroom from my kids to read. I threw inappropriate food at my children for dinner so I could read instead.)
Feels: Totally subjective to each person but did the book give me any tingles? Any butterflies? Did it rip my heart out (in a good way?)
Emotional depth: How well do I feel I know the characters at the end? How much did I feel their emotions throughout the story?
Sexual tension: Again, subjective, but how strong was the wanting and longing to me between the characters? A book might have strong sexual tension without a single touch.
Romance: Was there romance? Did romantic things happen? This can be actions/words/thoughts of the characters and again is subjective.
Sensuality: This is how the intimate scenes are written. Kisses and sexual scenes – how sensual were they? Were they on the mechanical side? Was there emotional pull tied in? Were the details explicit or flowery? These are subjective but generally (1) too short to get a good judgement (2) not all what I'm looking for - very vague or flowery prose (3) either not explicit enough or not enough emotional pull (too mechanical/physically descriptive without the emotions) (4) what I love in a scene (5) absolute perfection - perfect balance of emotional longing and explicit descriptions
Sex Scene Length: How long the bedroom scenes are (generally (1) is 1-3 sentences (2) is a few paragraphs to a page-ish (3) is about average, a few pages (4) more well developed scenes, quite a few pages with descriptions (4) the majority of the book takes place in the bedroom. This is always hard to tell for me on audio!
Steam Scale: Generally, each flame is a scene. If scenes are super close together I sometimes combine them. If a scene is super short or so vague I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t count it. There’s some levels of grey but generally the number of flames is how many sex scenes there are (I max out at 5 so I’ll put a + after if there’s more than that)
(hide spoiler)]

Find me
Instagram || The Storygraph || Bookbub ||

Book Clubs
The Ton and the Tartans (Historical Romance)
Upturned Petticoats and Undone Cravats (Historical Romance with Steam Requirements)
A Love Less Ordinary (Science Fiction, Paranormal, Monster, Fantasy)
Modern Manuscripts (Contemporary Romance)
Words for the Wicked (Contemporary Romance with Steam Requirements)
Vintage Romance (Old School Romance – published 2000 and prior)

(hide spoiler)]