If You Dare

If You Dare by Kresley Cole


My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pub. Date: May 2005

Series: MacCarrick Brothers Book 1

Synopsis: Can he exact revenge?
High in the Pyrenees, a band of mercenaries led by Courtland MacCarrick wages war for General Reynaldo Pascal. When Court turns on the evil general, Pascal orders him killed but Court narrowly escapes and exacts revenge by kidnapping Pascal's exquisite Castilian fiancée.

Can she deny her passions?
Lady Annalía Tristán Llorente despises her towering, barbaric captor almost as much as she does Pascal. Her inexplicable attraction to the Highlander only fuels her fury. But nothing will stop her from returning to Pascal — for if she doesn't wed him, she signs her brother's death warrant, as well as her own.

Can there be love between them?
From the moment Court discovers that Anna's prim façade masks a fiery, brave lass, his heart's ensnared, and he dares to defy the curse that has shadowed his life — to walk with death or walk alone. But Pascal vows that he'll hunt the two, never stopping until he's destroyed them both.

Recommended Reading:
If You Desire (MacCarrick Brothers Series #2)Kresley Cole
If You Deceive (MacCarrick Brothers Series #3)Kresley Cole
A Hunger like No Other (Immortals after Dark Series #1)Kresley Cole

The Smoke Jumper

The Smoke Jumper by Nicholas Evans


My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pub. Date: July 2002

Synopsis: The fire that was to change so many lives so utterly started with a single shaft of lightning. It struck a mountain ridge on a still and moonless night and nestled like a pupa of death in the desiccated heart of an ancient pine. There were witnesses no doubt to this sudden splintering of air and wood, but none that was human. The woman, camped nearby with her group of troubled teenagers, slept on and heard nothing.

She has brought them here by court order on a youth program to help them find themselves. But one among them will be lost forever. For soon the cocoon of fire will hatch to engulf the entire mountain and exact its deadly toll. And into this inferno will come ... The Smoke Jumper.
His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his closest friend, Ed Tully, an ambitious young musician. Julia loves them both but the tragedy on Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them and burns a brand on all their hearts.

With his blond, blue-eyed looks and laconic cowboy charm, Connor is the only child of a Montana rancher and a rodeo queen. Until that fateful day, he has been happy to spend his winters nurturing a career as a photographer and his summer vacations with Ed, "smoke jumping" — being dropped by parachute to fight remote forest fires.

In the wake of the fire, he embarks on a journey to the dark heart of human suffering, traveling the world's worst wars and disasters to take photographs that find him fame but never happiness. Reckless of a life he no longer wants, again and again he dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, he must walk through fire once more....

Recommended Reading:
The Divide by Nicholas Evans
Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

A Man in a Kilt

A Man In A Kilt by Sandy Blair


My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pub. Date: September 2004

Synopsis: For the first time, Beth Pudding has a home of her own, even if it is a haunted castle. Blackstone Castle's ghost is reported to be Duncan Angus MacDougall, who has spent the last 600 years trapped between life and death after being cursed by his third wife's gypsy-witch mother. Just when Beth is getting used to having her own personal ghost, a boating accident sends her back in time to the real Duncan, who mistakes her for his fourth wife. Trapped in the past sans her trusty makeup case, Beth is desperate to figure out how to return to the present until she realizes that her love for Duncan might be the key to breaking the curse.

Recommended Reading:
A Highlander for Christmas by Sandy Blair
A Thief in a Kilt by Sandy Blair
How to Marry A Duke by Sandy Blair
A Rogue in a Kilt by Sandy Blair

Simply Unforgettable

Simply Unforgettable by Mary Balogh

My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pub. Date: June 2005

Synopsis: They meet in a ferocious snowstorm. She is a young teacher with a secret past. He is the cool, black-caped stranger who unexpectedly comes to her rescue. Between these two unlikely strangers, desire is instantaneous…and utterly impossible to resist. Stranded together in a rustic country inn, Lucius Marshall, who is the Viscount Sinclair, and Frances Allard share a night of glorious, unforgettable passion. But Frances knows her place–and it is far from the privileged world of the sensual aristocrat. Due to begin her teaching position at Miss Martin’s School in Bath, Frances must try to forget that one extraordinary night–and the man who touched her with such exquisite tenderness and abandon.

But Frances cannot hide forever. And when fate once again throws them together, Lucius refuses to take no for an answer. If Frances will not be his wife, he will make her his mistress. So begins an odyssey fraught with intrigue, one that defies propriety and shocks the straitlaced ton. For Lucius’spassionate, single-minded pursuit is about to force Frances to give up all her secrets–except one–to win the heart of the man she already loves.

Recommended Reading:
Simply Love by Mary Balogh
Simply Magic by Mary Balogh
Simply Perfect by Mary Balogh

The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger


My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Once I got into the format of the story I loved it. The sense of impending doom, the way the author caught me up in the helplessness... I cried desperately because there was nothing I could do to change the ending. I could have done without the Claire/Gomez dining room table scene, but oh well.

Pub. Date: July 2004

Synopsis: This bestselling and innovative debut novel from Audrey Niffenegger explores the perfect marriage, one that is tested by challenges the couple can neither control nor predict. An imaginative extension of everyday life, the story asks: What if two people who loved each other deeply, married, and faced a life in which one person remained constant while the other slipped fluidly in and out of time?

A modern love story with a twist that invites us to linger over questions of how life and love change over time.

Recommended Reading:
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen [unabridged audiobook] [NOOKbook]
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

The Dark Highlander

The Dark Highlander by Karen Marie Moning

My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pub. Date: October 2002

Series: Highlander Book 5

Synopsis: Journey to a world of ancient magic, breathtaking sensuality, thrilling time-travel.... Journey to the world of The Dark Highlander. Crisscrossing the continents and the centuries, here is a novel as gripping as it is sensual--an electrifying adventure that will leave you breathless....

I am Dageus MacKeltar, a man with one good conscience and thirteen bad ones, driven to sate my darkest desires...

From his penthouse lair high above Manhattan, Dageus looks out over a glittering city that calls to the darkness within him. A sixteenth-century Scot trapped between worlds, he is fighting a losing battle with the thirteen Druids who possess his soul, dooming him to an eternity of sexual pursuit. When Chloe Zanders, student of antiquities, is drawn into his world, she finds the insatiable alpha male an irresistible lure.Before long, she is caught up in an ancient prophecy that will sweep her back into time to medieval Scotland. Plunged into a world of timeless magic and dark seduction, she will soon face the challenge of a lifetime: fighting thirteen evil spirits for the heart of one irresistible man....

Recommended Reading:
Kiss of the Highlander (Highlander Series #4) by Karen Marie Moning
Spell of the Highlander (Highlander Series #7) by Karen Marie Moning
To Tame a Highland Warrior (Highlander Series #2) by Karen Marie Moning
A Hunger like No Other (Immortals after Dark Series #1) by Kresley Cole
No Rest for the Wicked (Immortals after Dark Series #2) by Kresley Cole

Kiss of the Highlander

Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning

My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pub. Date: September 2001

Series: Highlander Book 4

Synopsis: Enchanted by a powerful spell, Highland laird Drustan MacKeltar slumbered for nearly five centuries hidden deep in a cave, until an unlikely savior awakened him. The enticing lass who dressed and spoke like no woman he’d ever known was from his distant future, where crumbled ruins were all that remained of his vanished world. Drustan knew he had to return to his own century if he was to save his people from a terrible fate. And he needed the bewitching woman by his side....

Gwen Cassidy had come to Scotland to shake up her humdrum life and, just maybe, meet a man. How could she have known that a tumble down a Highland ravine would send her plunging into an underground cavern — to land atop the most devastatingly seductive man she’d ever seen? Or that once he’d kissed her, he wouldn’t let her go? Bound to Drustan by a passion stronger than time, Gwen is swept back to sixteenth-century Scotland, where a treacherous enemy plots against them ... and where a warrior with the power to change history will defy time itself for the woman he loves....

Recommended Reading:
The Dark Highlander (Highlander Series #5) by Karen Marie Moning
To Tame a Highland Warrior (Highlander Series #2) by Karen Marie Moning
The Highlander's Touch (Highlander Series #3) by Karen Marie Moning
A Hunger like No Other (Immortals after Dark Series #1) by Kresley Cole
No Rest for the Wicked (Immortals after Dark Series #2) by Kresley Cole