Captured by the Pirate Laird (Highland Force #1)

Wed by proxy to a man she has never seen, Lady Anne is already nervous enough about her future without having to worry about pirates off the English Coast.  Until they attack her ship, that is.  These pirates are Scotsman.  Led by Laird Calum MacLeod, they have resorted to piracy to keep their clan from starving, thanks to the purges often led by Anne’s new husband, Lord Wharton.  As an unwitting hostage, Anne is forced to Calum’s keep to be ransomed.  While she is there she sees a different life and a chance at happiness.

Against the backdrop of early Elizabethan England, Ms. Jarecki shows a possible outcome to the multiple English invasions of Scotland, where piracy happens for survival, not greed. Calum is a man of his time, whose thoughts are always clan first, while shoving his desire for a wife aside. He is portrayed brilliantly as a true Laird, where honor is absolute and giving your word means something; even ignoring his own wants. Anne’s plucky character, honed by responsibility to her family, is allowed to stretch and grow, while still being believable in the setting. The Scottish brogue is used throughout, but not consistently, with the cadence sometimes being too English, and the spelling of the brogue often flipping between English and Scots. The handful of grammar and punctuation errors take less away, but combined, they cause stumbles.

A beautiful and descriptively brutal account of the horrors of the time period, this story does not ice over the results of English ravaging, and doesn’t find peace with what happened, but paints a stunningly realistic image of love despite it all.

Julie York