You’ve heard the term, mixed bag? Well, that’s Enchanted By You in a nutshell. This is the third in the Dream Seekers series, and I think I should have read the other books before attempting this one.

Juliette “Morning Star” Elkheart is half Cheyenne. She has come to Europe to trace her Scottish heritage at the ancestral home of Lady Hester MacLyon, whose library is reputed to be the most complete resource for genealogical study in Scotland. Julie has been having dreams of a battle that may have involved one of her ancestors, so, since she feels the dream means something very important, she has traveled from Medicine Hat, Alberta in Canada to Edinburgh to try to solve the riddle.

Lady Hester’s eldest grandson, laird of Strathlyon, Lyon MacLyon, is a battle-weary, guilt-ridden giant who feels responsible for his younger brother’s death when they were both fighting in the Sudan. Feeling himself unworthy of a woman’s love for this reason, when he meets Julie and finds himself attracted to her, he turns into a ferocious beast and tries desperately to push her away while having unremitting and blatantly horny thoughts about her (which he tells her about, in Gaelic). Lyon tries at every turn to get Julie to leave Strathlyon, but she’s determined to find the answer to her dreams, and Lyon realizes the longer she is around, the more certain he is he will end up fulfilling his libidinous plans for her.

Several attempts are made to kill various members of the MacLyon family, but between Lyon and Julie, they manage to thwart most of them. The dream Julie keeps having seems to center around a betrayal perpetrated by the Clan Danielson, the result of which was the annihilation for all time of every member of the clan. So, was Julie’s great-great-grandfather a MacDougall (as he called himself), a MacLyon, or, in fact, one of the dastardly Danielsons? And what about the Macfie’s who reaped the benefits of the massacre?

Now to the aforementioned mixed bag. Julie is perfect. She speaks 4 languages (including Gaelic, so she understands every lascivious phrase Lyon utters to her). She saves the life of every sick animal in the county, can tell the bad guys by the look in their eyes, and knows just where to look to find condemning evidence (then goes personally to retrieve it – alone). She can throw a knife with deadly accuracy, save children from drowning and other hazards, and can shoot any kind of weapon available and hit the bulls-eye from a galloping horse, bareback (the horse, not Julie). Ill-mannered dogs obey her every command, and she is capable of offering advice to lovelorn like she knows what she’s talking about. Oh, and she just turned 18 in July. Like, what does this woman do for an encore … open-heart surgery?

As heroes go, Lyon was a pretty good one, but the problem is, he is 17 years older than Julie. This just did not work for me. What does a girl that age see in a man that age? When I was 17, I thought anybody over 21 was old! I never saw this couple together … not culturally, not emotionally, not socially, not physically. Lyon’s got red hair and green eyes and stands 6’6″, while Julie’s dark and a petite 5’2″. This caused a visual inconsistency for me that I couldn’t reconcile no matter how hard I tried. Between all the Cheyenne, English, Scottish, and Gaelic words and nicknames and pet names, things became totally confusing. Throw in a lavender and pink plaid (lavender and pink? — for the cutting edge in manly Scottish warrior fashion?), two nephews on whose antics the author spends a lot of time, a plethora of secondary characters (and their relatives), and a completely unnecessary death, and I just wanted to blurt, “Enough! Plot device overkill!”

The hero spends an inordinate amount of time thinking and talking about his manly flesh and what he wants to do with it. Toss in a generous heap of purple prose, and I nearly lost it. “Beneath his kilt, his massive sex rose turgid and insistent, wanting . . . yearning . . . demanding entrance into her dainty temple,” and “…his swollen shaft lifted and twitched beneath his kilt as though scenting its prey.” Come on!

Enchanted By You did have its moments. There were parts I enjoyed and became very interested in. Then, things would plunge into chaos again, and I was lost. There is a lot of Scottish history here, but it’s often very distracting … especially when the hero and heroine are in the throes of passion and they start chatting about historical facts.

If you have read Dream Catcher and Fly With The Eagle, you might enjoy this one. I haven’t, so Enchanted By You left me fairly disenchanted.