Tall, Dark and Kilted by Lizzie Lamb @lizzie_lamb #Romance in the Scottish Highlands #bookreview #SundayBlogShare

• Author: Lizzie Lamb
• Published: October 2012 by The New Romantics 4
• Category: Contemporary Romance
• 

Notting Hill Meets Monarch of the Glen . . . Fliss Bagshawe longs for a passport out of Pimlico where she works as a holistic therapist. After attending a party in Notting Hill she loses her job and with it her dream of one day being her own boss. When she’s offered the chance to take over a failing therapy centre, she grabs it with both hands. But there’s a catch – the centre lies five hundred miles away – in Wester Ross, Scotland. 

Fliss Bagshawe, determined and independent, has worked hard and struggled to support herself since her parents died. A qualified holistic therapist, she works at a salon in Pimlico, doing a little moonlighting in the evenings to supplement her income. When Fliss is offered the chance to manage a salon on an estate in the Highlands by the self-centred and rebellious, Isla Urquhart and her sister, Cat, she is both excited and apprehensive. Having lost her job, without references, ostensibly through her association with the Urquhart sisters, Fliss feels she has nothing to lose by accepting. 

Fliss’ romantic notion of life in the Highlands suffers a blow when she meets Ruairi, the gorgeous Laird of Kinlock Mara, half-brother to Isla and Cat. Ruairi considers the therapy centre another of his stepmother’s half baked schemes, and believes Fliss is an opportunist and there under false pretences.

From their vantage point, the mountains behind them were hidden by trees and Fliss could see soft, rounded hills that swept all the way down to a large loch. The colours were dazzling; the green of the hills and trees, the blue sky reflected in the deeper blue of the loch and the ochre of the sandy beach which gave way to paler sand near a pebble path. The shore line dipped in and out of the expanse of water and in the distance, at vanishing point, the opposing shores appeared to link hands, cutting the loch off from the sea.

An entertaining and fun contemporary romance with engaging characters, a stunning location and a broodingly sexy hero – the ‘tall, dark and kilted’ of the title. Fliss’ determination to prove Ruairi wrong about her motives and show him she has the capability to make a success of the therapy centre results in some spirited and humorous conversations and clashes, with hints of an attraction they both refuse to accept or admit to. 

All the characters are well-rounded and believable. Fliss, feisty and likeable and Ruairi, weighed down by the responsibility of the estate and the antics of his family, are both strong main protagonists. The secondary characters are also well developed, so much so that I could cheerfully have swung for Isla. I love the evocatively described scenery and the way traditions and beliefs are woven into the story. 

Book links ~ Amazon UK | Amazon US

About Lizzie Lamb

With Scottish, Irish, and Brazilian blood in her veins, it’s hardly surprising that Lizzie Lamb is a writer. She even wrote extra scenes for the films she watched as a child and acted out in the playground with her friends. She is ashamed to admit that she kept all the good lines for herself. Luckily, she saves them for her readers these days. 

Lizzie’s love of writing went on hold while she pursued a successful teaching career, finishing up as a Deputy Head teacher of a large primary school. Since deciding to leave the profession to realise her dream of becoming a published novelist, Lizzie hasn’t looked back. She wrote Tall, Dark and Kilted – which echoes her love of her homeland in every page, not to mention heroes in kilts – and published it. Lizzie loves the quick fire interchange between the hero and heroine – like in old black and white Hollywood movies – and hope this comes over in her writing.

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