Lord Blodswell is a vampire, and an old one at that. So he’s seen a lot in his hundreds of years of unlife, but he’s never seen anything quite like Rhiannon Sinclair. Pitted against one another by virtue of the fact that she’s a witch and he’s an evil thing, sparks fly between these two from their first meeting, and not just from their relative powers running amok.

“She makes him feel more alive than he has since he died…” is written on the cover of this book. And I was so thrilled to begin reading; I was ready to devour this book. The opening engaged me, I loved Matthew Halkett, Lord Blodswell. I even enjoyed Rhiannon… until she opened her mouth. There, the love-affair ended. As a heroine, she is everything she ought to be. Beautiful, fiery, independent. But her (and her family’s) Scottish accents drove me to absolute distraction.

Being a huge fan of Scottish romances from childhood, I gave her a lot of leeway, but I definitely reached a point where I swore if I saw one more “doona” or “ken”, I was going to scream. At one point, there was book-throwage. It wasn’t pretty, but I couldn’t help it. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is when you’re in the middle of a hot love scene and the heroine says, “doona stop”? I wanted to choke her. I completely get the need for some authenticity when it comes to spoken dialects in written works. But there is a line. And unfortunately, Miss Dare crossed the line for me. Completely ruined the second half of the book, once my dinna-ken-threshold was passed.

While I thought the plot and character development were well-executed, and the writing generally solid, it was just hard for me to thoroughly engage in a book whose dialogue alternately made me laugh out loud and hurl the book across the room. Thank God I wasn’t using my Kindle, that’s all I have to say.

I’ve read Lydia Dare in the past, I’m sure I will read her again. But I can’t tout my thorough enjoyment of a book I would have preferred not to finish. Don't do this to me again.

~ Camryn