Highland Summer — Elizabeth Hawksley

Love can be unpredictable… And family secrets can be dangerous.At thirty-two-years old and only passably attractive, Robina Drummond, is hardly a contender in the marriage stakes. Her cousins, the Penicuiks, invite her to their home in the Scottish Highlands to be a chaperone in their high stakes game of finding a husband for their daughter.The prize is plant hunter Edward Mountsorrel, heir to a great estate, but after a disastrous first marriage, the last thing Edward wants is a new wife.Then Robina discovers that her cousin Duncan, a man with a violent temper, has a sordid secret involving a bastard son which could destroy her cousins’ marriage plans.Robina is something new in Edward’s experience; an intelligent woman, leading an independent life. But is she hiding something from him? The truth could challenge all his assumptions about women.Robina’s Highland Summer will be both unexpected and challenging.Reviews for Highland SummerIf you find standard romances a bit thin and yearn for something with a bit more stuffing then this book might fit the bill … It is a pleasant change to read about a heroine who seems so buoyant and also so refreshingly real. None of the heroes behave like the domineering alpha male so beloved of romantic fiction, and the way all the plot strands come ever closer together is both suspenseful and satisfying. This is also a good way of describing this enjoyable novel.Rachel A Hyde in MyShelf.comIt is always a pleasure to read the work of a writer in full command of her material. Elizabeth Hawksley is equally at home with characterization, dialogue, plot and setting. She has a sensitive feeling for both place and period …On another level the book is a valuable social document. Sometimes we forget just how much the position of women has changed in the last 150 years. Without a dowry and only passably good-looking, Robina has little hope of the safety-net of marriage. She is forced to rely upon her own resources which she does to good effect, scandalizing her snobbish relations in the process.I found the construction of this book most interesting. At times we are invited to read Robina’s diary, giving us access to her most intimate thoughts and bringing us closer to the heroine. Elizabeth Hawksley also gives us brief glimpses into the stories of the other characters in this book. There seemed to be material here for many further novels and at the start of the story I did wonder how these disparate threads could be brought together. I needn’t have worried. All is smoothly resolved. The villain gets all his desserts and the book is beautifully rounded off.Margaret Crosland in Historical Novels ReviewElizabeth Hawksley’s exciting historical novels feature witty, resourceful heroines who often get themselves into dangerous situations, but whose ingenuity and strength of character guarantee that they will always win through …Many of Elizabeth’s novels are set during the Regency period. She has built up her own reference library … and can research topics such as costume, food, shopping and gambling, ensuring that she gets all the details correct. But her novels are far more than recreations of days gone by. She is an author who knows her chosen period, so to read her stories is to go back in time to the 19th century and to live the life her heroines led.Margaret James in Writing Magazine: Fiction Focus