Title: If You DesireSeries: MacCarrick Brothers
Author: Kresley Cole
Read copy: Mass Market Paperback
Published: April 24, 2007
Publisher: Pocket
ISBN: 1416503609
ISBN-13: 9781416503606
He tried to run....
In his youth, Hugh MacCarrick foolishly fell in love with a beautiful English lass who delighted in teasing him with her flirtatious ways. Yet he knew he could never marry her because he was shadowed by an accursed family legacy. To avoid temptation, Hugh left home, ultimately becoming an assassin.
She tried to forget him....
Jane Weyland was devastated when the Highlander she believed would marry her abandoned her instead. Years later, when Hugh MacCarrick is summoned to protect her from her father's enemies, her heartache has turned to fury—but her desire for him has not waned.
Will passion overwhelm them?
In hiding, Jane torments Hugh with seductive play. He struggles to resist her because of deadly secrets that could endanger her further. But Hugh is no longer a gentle young man—and toying with the fever-pitched desires of a hardened warrior will either get Jane burned...or enflame a love that never died.
My rating:
I must say I found this book a vast improvement from the first in this series. It's still not a masterpiece of fiction, and it would've been much better without the slightly too tramp-y heroine and the rather obtuse "yeah, yeah, you're cursed" hero, but we can't have everything.
The suspense subplot is the saving grace of this one, with the villain much more interesting than the leading couple. I wished there'd be more of him throughout the story and his demise was a bit too abrupt and swift, providing quite an anti-climatic resolution to the main reason the two idiots (read: hero and heroine) got together in the first place.
And here's the major bone I have to pick about this book. Once again the hero and heroine were too bland to elicit much enthusiasm in me to even bother to care for them.
Jane was a hussy and a tramp even before she turned eighteen...And she wondered why the guy split. He saw a nutjob in the making and decided to cut his losses. Tell me again, what was with the plan of getting to marry her by teasing him mercilessly? The only thing such a plan ever accomplishes is for the heroine to end with her skirt around her waist and ruined, while the hero merrily moves on.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case with Hugh. He was as much in love with her as she was with him, but he was cursed. Remember that nasty little curse that's supposed to be the main story-arc of the series? Once again, it only appeared when convenient and to make the hero even more of a jackass as he already was.
Of course, now I have to read the final book. The little cliffy about Ethan getting shot and disappearing from the face of the earth (Is he dead? Is he alive? Do we even care?) had me flying through the rest of Hugh's story so I could see what really happened.
And speaking of the rather anti-climatic end of the villain and the untimely death of the suspense subplot...I skimmed through the remaining pages, barely stiffening yawns, because the two idiots of the leading couple reverted back to the beginning of the story when the villain met his deserved death...And it was boring...Even the requisite happy ending was boring...Not to mention Court and Annalia's (from the first book) cameo...Yawn! But a great plot devise to get the hero thinking and finally forgoing the blasted curse.
Not good, but not as bad as the first book. I truly hope Ethan will make up for it...He better.
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