The Scottish Lord's Secret Bride by Raven McAllan ~Review in English~

The Scottish Lord's Secret Bride by Raven MacAllan 

Blurb:
 

Secrets never stay buried for long…

Reluctant heiress Lady Morven Weston is tired of her mother interfering in her love affairs. At twenty-six there’s only so many more society balls she can attend before resigning herself to life as an unmarried maid.

But when Lord Fraser Napier, the man Morven ran wild with one long, hot summer, returns to Scotland, his shocking revelations change everything. Fraser never annulled their whirlwind marriage all those years ago!

Preparing to take up his ancestral seat, Fraser’s not letting go of his secret bride that easily – he needs an heir. It’s only a matter of time before Morven surrenders to Fraser’s seductive touch and finds herself in his bed…

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I was never tempted to put it away because it is really well written and the characters were also complex and interesting especially - or rather - at least the heroine and the hero. So this should have been at least for stars instead of three, right? Right.
And I must admit that I changed my mind about that again and again and... well, you get the point. In the end I decided that I loved this book and will definitely read it again but there were some inconsistencies in the plot that really bothered me and that finally tipped the balance.

I will try to phrase it in a way that I don't spoil anything for other readers, of course.
On the one hand, we have two people who are very obviously in love. You can feel it, you read about it and you feel that they belong together. Soooo.....no problem there? Well, actually there is a problem concerning their marriage. Yes, their marriage is a problem for those two people in love, you got that right!
Apart from this marriage problem which might have been handled differently, those two are subjected to a fair amount of meddling and matchmaking attempts from their families, which is not only confusing for them but also for the reader especially as their families' feelings and actions seem to contradict each other every other minute.

Due to that, you never get close to the other characters, so it is just the hero and the heroine that are more developed and appear authentic whereas the other characters remain a bit flat.

For good measure there is also some mystic element represented by some feelings or intuitions and, of course, the gypsies.

Okay, rereading all that, I must admit that it sounds rather bad but as a matter of fact it isn't. Not at all.
I really loved reading about Morven and Fraser and I loved how open they were with their feelings for each other despite everything that had happened and that had torn them apart - and I wouldn't have minded to send their families to the northpole or wherever far away because they got a bit on my nerves with their contradictory actions. The story about the lovers is sweet and the hero and the heroine are both very lovable and loving characters and -which was really refreshing- despite their past, they are not given to misunderstandings and false accusations.

Sooo....on the whole I really liked the book and will definitely read it again but the flaws in the plot are still rather ovious.

★★★