Colleen Faulkner’s Highland Lady left me so underwhelmed I don’t know where to start. After all, there are so many choices: the contrived plot; the one-dimensional characters and their unbelievable actions; the grammatically-mangled dialogue and painfully abused accents; and the foolish choice of setting. I might as well just start at the beginning.

Elen of Dunblane has just lost her father, and in the absence of any male heirs, she has become the new laird of the castle. But that’s okay – she’s been raised as a male, we’re told. You know the type – she carries a broadsword, rules her men with an iron fist, and demands and receives the respect of all. Except that when you’ve seen this character before, she may actually have been believable, where as Elen is indecisive and an extremely poor judge of character.

One day, Elen’s “sweet” sister Rosalyn is kidnapped while Elen is away from the castle. According to Elen’s dedicated steward, Finley, Rosalyn has been carried away by raiders from Rancoff, a neighboring castle with whom Dunblane has been feuding for ever so long over a piece of land adjacent to both properties. Naturally, Elen takes off for Rancoff and spies Munro, the handsome laird of the castle, returning home. She promptly decides to kidnap him, and hold him until sweet Rosalyn is returned. So, she hauls him back to Dunblane and throws him into the dungeon for questioning.

And how does this intellectually-gifted lass question her prisoner, who by all rights should be spitting mad? Why, she hops into the dungeon with him – alone – to confront him face to face. But never fear, dear readers! Apparently he’s from the same school of hostage etiquette as she because, mad as we’re told he is at his capture, he makes no attempt at escape. He eyes the dirk at her belt briefly, we’re told, but when she commands him not to even consider it, he complies like an obedient puppy. They chat about the capture of sweet Rosalyn, the likelihood that Munro’s brother Cerdic is responsible, and the chance that Rosalyn may have been a willing participant. The result of the chat is two-fold. First, Elen becomes convinced that Munro is innocent (although she doesn’t feel that that constitutes an argument for letting him out of the dungeon, apparently), and second, Munro decides he’s fallen in love with the supposedly-feisty wench.

Of course, sweet Rosalyn was involved in her own capture, and as you may have guessed, there is nothing about her that would lead even an imbecile to believe she was at all sweet, despite Elen’s idiotically rosy view of her shrewish, selfish, and overly-ambitious (not to mention lazy, promiscuous, self-serving, and inexplicably evil) sister. Aside from being the essential embodiment of evil, she is either incredibly stupid or fiendishly clever by turns – whichever is most convenient to the plot at the moment.

Meanwhile, Cedric is no prize, unless the contest involves lack of brains, ethics, or honor. He loves his brother, really he does, but if Rosalyn says jump, he jumps, and if she says, kill, well – you get the idea. He is a pitiful character, with even less dimension than his captive-cum-wife. As with Rosalyn and Elen, we never know why one sibling turned out so well, and the other the exact opposite. But the characters are so flat and laughable, it really doesn’t matter, because one would be hard pressed to come up with a reason to care.

And then there’s Munro. While he’s a prisoner, Munro thinks little of escape – or his duties – and plenty of how he’d like to get Elen in the sack, preferably after their wedding. Then, when he’s freed, he spends a month “wooing” her by sending all sorts of girly gifts (cloth, thread, needles) – conveniently forgetting that she’s not girly at all – and then wondering why all of his gifts are returned. He also sits around reflecting on how worthless Cedric is for never thinking of anything other than getting women in the sack.

When Munro can’t convince Elen to marry him (she wants the land in dispute “for her sons to inherit” and somehow she never puts two and two together and realizes that her sons would also be his sons and thus would inherit if she married him), he goes to his good buddy, Robert the Bruce. Although Robert has spent the past eight years securing and defending his rule of Scotland, he apparently has nothing better to do than trot around seeing to his friends’ marriages. Robert orders them married, and has Elen dragged – literally kicking and screaming – to the church. Munro doesn’t want Robert’s men to harm her, but other than that, has no problem with the process.

When, after months together, as Elen and Munro become closer and more in love, Munro begins to fall victim to a series of “accidents.” Though there are at least three characters who would benefit from his demise, the sorry plot demands that Elen be pinned as the obvious perpetrator. All of which makes perfect sense when considering that the characters featured in Highland Lady are severely under-endowed with intelligence, personality, or likable characteristics. The plot meanders conveniently and Elen, Munro and the rest of the gang make decisions you yourself wouldn’t make in a drunken stupor. What’s worse is the Scottish brogue the author writes for her characters’ dialogue – to me they sounded like petulant two-year-olds with bad accents.

This novel defies my abilities to express disappointment. There are so many good Scottish romances out there that I strongly recommend not wasting time or money on this sorry excuse for a book. Pass on this, and reward yourself for that wise choice by reading something else – just about anything else would be more worth your while.