Author Jen Hollings begins a new trilogy about three Scottish sisters, daughters of a witch burned at the stake, and all possessing some kind of magical power. My Wicked Highlander is the first of the three books, which are to be released in consecutive months.

After their mother’s death, the young girls were separately sent into hiding for their safety. Isobel MacDonell fostered with an English family for twelve years, but now, at age twenty-four, her father has sent for her to return home and marry a neighbor. Her betrothed, the Earl of Kincreag, is a man with close ties to King James and he’s powerful enough to keep her safe. Sir Philip Kilpatrick, with a couple of his men, is sent to fetch her. Though he knows of her mother’s fate, Philip doesn’t believe in witches and is surprised when Isobel’s foster family is relieved to see her leave.

Isobel’s powers are of the psychic variety – she gets impressions and visions from the touching of objects or through dreams. Philip himself has a knack for finding lost objects, usually people, and I thought Hollings might have been hinting that he also possessed some small powers, but this is never explored. Philip’s only failure in finding someone was with his own half-sister. When he was a teen and she a child, she disappeared while under his care and years of fruitless searching have left him convinced that she is dead and consumed with guilt, as well as making life very uncomfortable for him at home. He rarely returns there, preferring to stay with Isobel’s father, with whom he fostered, when not on a job.

Isobel has worked hard at not reading or probing other people without their knowledge or consent, but her curiosity is rampant concerning Philip. She can tell even without a touch that he carries a deep sorrow regarding his sister. She also knows that there is something odd happening with her father, which Philip and his men refuse to share with her.

A demonstration of Isobel’s powers occurs in a small village where she correctly identifies a murderer and finds the burial spot through the victim’s handkerchief. They wind up having to flee the town when the frightened villagers begin to murmur the W Word. But because of this, Philip now believes and is willing, with Isobel’s encouragement, to tell her of his sister and accept Isobel’s help in finding her. This search leads to a conclusion I didn’t see coming, but thought fit the characters.

Both Philip and Isobel fight the very powerful attraction each feels for the other, for she is engaged and he is bound by his loyalty to her father and very fearful for her future if she is branded a witch. While witch-hunting fever is dying out in England, it is raging in Scotland. She needs someone powerful enough to protect her, not a knight-for-hire, estranged from his family.

I read this book in one day; it was smoothly written and Philip and Isobel are empathetic and interesting characters. A couple of the secondary characters really stood out for me, especially the charming and perpetually hungry Stephen, one of Philip’s men, and the dark, misunderstood and enigmatic Earl of Kincreag – I hope to see both of these men in future books. If things got a bit melodramatic in the last quarter of the book, it did not intrude much on my enjoyment of the book, nor keep me from turning the pages to see how it would all work out.

This is a solid, strong, enjoyable book, and I am looking forward to seeing what develops with Isobel’s sisters.