Please don’t let my grade deter you; I know there are readers out there who will enjoy this book. I’m just not one of them. First of all, I don’t understand why this book was called Highland Jewel when the hero constantly calls the heroine Rosebud, and never once likens her to any kind of gem. Wouldn’t Highland Flower or Highland Rose have been more appropriate? This is only one of the little nit-picks I have with this book.

Heroine Hero Fraser (it was eventually and thankfully explained that her father had been a Shakespeare buff) is English. Ciaran MacLoarn recently returned from America, is Scottish, the last of his clan. Hero and hero meet when her scatter-brained guide heads for the hills, leaving her all alone as she attempts to find her Aunt Elspeth who lives somewhere in Scotland.

As for Ciaran, he’s on the run from the villainous MacDubhair’s, who have slaughtered Ciaran’s entire clan and are, even now, close on his heels. He takes refuge in an abandoned and supposedly haunted abbey, were he is sheltered by its lone inhabitant, a “bogle” named Finley. Finley isn’t really a bogle (ghost), he’s just weird.

Hero is running from a bad life in England, and Ciaran is searching for the reason the MacDubhairs suddenly took it in their heads to annihilate his family. They meet when Hero also takes refuge in the abandoned abbey (suddenly the most popular singles’ bar in Scotland). Because Hero is related to Aunt Elspeth and Elspeth is related in some obscure way to Ciaran, he feels it’s his duty to protect Hero, so they join forces as Hero tries to find her aunt, and Ciaran tries to find some answers. Eventually, Ciaran is able to locate some of his surviving relatives, but none are willing to tell him what really happened. Even though he had traveled from America and risked his life to track down the answer to this horrible question, Ciaran seemingly readily accepts their refusual to answer his straight-forward questions because they are ashamed. This was unrealistic and completely contrived simply to perpetuate the story and the supposed mystery. It was also very frustrating for the reader.

As I said before, there are those readers who will enjoy this book a lot more than I did, and that’s fine. For me personally, it just never took off. For the first hundred pages, Finley comes across as old and decrepit, but he is actually fairly young. Also, the book itself is very slow to start; for the first half, almost nothing happens except for some highly contrived sexual tension between Hero and Ciaran, and some really inane conversations. Additionally, Ciaran speaks in dialect, which is extremely difficult to read – When yer tryin’ ta figure out what th’ character’s sayin’ all the time, ’tis verra difficult to keep an even pace, ya ken? No, it doesn’t stop the flow, but it sure clogs it up a lot.

After you get to know them, Ciaran and Hero are likable enough and a couple of the secondary characters are quite sympathetic. The story eventually winds its way to a satisfactory conclusion, but by then, I was more than ready to put the book and down and move on to something else.

By-the-by, I know this isn’t the author’s fault, but I just have to comment. This book has a nice cover. Handsome man in a kilt, dark hair, dark eyes, the background looking very medieval. Great. I carried this image in my head until I got to the part where it’s really 1742 (and not 1242), and the hero has almost white-blonde hair and leaf-green eyes. Whoa! My mind went on character-vision-revision-overload and never recovered. I’d rather not have had a cover at all than one so entirely misleading.