Book Review: A Highland Knight to Remember by Amy Jarecki

A Highland Knight to Remember by Amy Jarecki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**This review contains spoilers**

This is the second of Amy Jarecki's novels that I've read, and my enjoyment was just about the same with this one. Overall, this story was great; lots of love and steam, with some adventure thrown in. I very much enjoyed the interchange between Sean and Gyllis, particularly when Gyllis was in the midst of her recovery from paralysis and he went frequently to visit her.

With that being said, I have some criticisms. Firstly, I thought that it was just in the first book I read (in which the heroine wants to be a nun), but the over-doing-it with God references got to me a bit. There were a *lot* of scenes in which the Sean or Gyllis shouted at the skies, asking God "Why is this happening to me?!?!" or some variation of that. It got old really fast.

Second, was the third sex scene. Yowza. So Gyllis just rescues Sean from the brink of death (he'd been held in a full-body iron contraption and starved for three days). They miraculously make it out of there and to safety in order to clean him up, etc. He gets his servants to draw him a bath (because he was covered in blood, snot, oozing lesions, and his own urine, according to the scenes with Sean in the cave), and then, before he's even gotten into the bath, he's got a raging erection for Gyllis. I just don't get it. He's almost died from lack of food and water, he's weak, he's been tortured, and likely smells to high heaven. How on earth does this make any sense? I mean, he could possibly be up for some sex after he's gotten some rest, food, water, and bathed, but it doesn't make sense to have it before then.

Additionally, once Gyllis starts washing him in the bath, it doesn't say anything about his washing his face and hair, which led me to believe that once they started kissing, his snot-covered nose and upper lip (as he'd previously described it) was rubbing all over her mouth. Not only that, but he pulled her into his filthy bathwater! Talk about cringeworthy. He was supposed to have washed his stale pee covered body in that water, as well as the fact that it'd have dried blood and puss from his "festering wounds" floating around. And somehow Gyllis didn't even notice that the nasty water was soaking into her clothes when he pulled her in. Nope, she just went on kissing his booger-covered face.

My third--and last--criticism of A Highland Knight to Remember was the fact that these characters seem to recover from injuries shockingly fast. Not only was Sean ready for sex immediately after being rescued from the torture device, but he rode off before dawn and went straight towards the battle. Once he's in hand-to-hand combat with his foe, he quickly realizes his folly, but I was still amazed that he was able to get out of bed, let alone ride around and wield weapons.

These things aside, I (again) very much enjoyed this novel. I would certainly recommend it for those wishing for a sweet and sexy love story between two strong-willed characters.

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