The Scottish Bride by Peggy Hanchar was just too difficult and too unpleasant a book for this reviewer to enjoy reading. Lillias McGinnis’s horrible adventure begins at age 9. Her father beheaded, her mother cowering in a convent, Lillias is married off to the son of the man she believes killed her father. Iain MacLeod, her “husband”, is so disgusted by his father’s actions that he traipses off to France, only to return several years when his evil father is killed, and he is named the new Laird.

Iain and Lillias forge an alliance seemingly based on lust. Both were mistreated by Iain’s father, neither trusts the other. And so, back and forth they go, lusting and mistrusting. Add a few supposed betrayals, a kidnapping or two, and the story progresses, with nothing apparently but sex holding them together.

There is such nastiness in this story – incest, poison, dark and dank dungeons, and the avenging ghost of Lillias’ father, that there is little time left for Lillias and Iain to know each other or to spend time together, let alone come to love each other.

The secondary characters, Peadair and Mary, are more entertaining to watch – we can see their love develop in a way the author doesn’t provide for the main characters. The reader is not given the chance to love Iain and Lillias as a couple; as a result, their couplings, while well-written, are meaningless.

There are some touching scenes in this book, of coming together, of supposed betrayal, and of belated understanding. But the author veers off into the perversity of incest, madness and sheer hatred of a magnitude so difficult to comprehend that the story ceases to be a romance and the reader loses interest altogether.

As a reader and reviewer, I understand my tastes are just that – mine. Others may enjoy stories where the hero and heroine are separated for chapter upon chapter. Others may not be distressed by all the cruelty and perversity. But I strongly believe writers of romantic fiction should remember what it’s all about. In the albeit slightly changed words of James Carville, “It’s the romance, stupid!” Peggy Hanchar seems to have forgotten.