Review: Nevada Highlander by Erin O'Quinn

For some men, love comes hard. But deceit comes even harder.

A Scottish castle laird decides to attend a big game hunt in the mountains of Eastern Nevada. His covert, and reluctant, babysitter is a governor-appointed state trooper.

The exuberant Rory Drummond needs no protector. He is a trained hunter, in addition to having several other entertaining skills. The state trooper Alex Dominguez is reserved, shrouding his past—even from himself—out of a need to seal off old memories.

Inevitably, the men find each other irresistible, and soon certain sparks begin to affect both of them. As the attraction between them grows, so does their sense of commitment to each other. Only one thing stands in the way of a mature relationship … Alex’s fear of telling Rory his secret assignment. The tension between his sense of duty and his newfound passion is a factor which threatens to tear them apart once the truth is known.

And the facts must eventually come out.

What will happen when the hunter finds he's being spied on, thousands of miles from home?

And what will the trooper do when his cover is, ah, blown?

(2.75 hearts rounded up)

So Nevada Highlander.....

I loved the blurb, it was so promising - however at times I did feel disappointed. I've not read any Erin O'Quinn before and generally I liked her style of writing, it was well formulated and easy to read. Characters were well defined and likeable and the setting was gorgeous. Rory our Scottish laird was feisty and manly (yum) and Alex our state trooper was considerate and manly (double yum). They were hot together, they had sex within hours of meeting and continued having sex, lots and lots of sex....The Nevada landscape in which it was mostly set was beautiful, Erin clearly has a love of this area that comes across in her writing, I would love to visit this part of the world on the strength of this alone. So why aren't I falling over myself raving about it?

Well firstly I have to say that I was stopped at 26% and this was my status update;

"Epic fail. They've known each other for a few hours and gone bare-back. No, just no."

Quite honestly in this day and age I really don't expect to read this. I love bare-back if it's made clear that both characters know they are disease free - and this doesn't just go for M/M writing but F/M as well. If the scene is a sex scene and it's a detailed sex scene than I want to know about protection, however hot it is without. If it's virgins, an other world story or so on and so forth I don't care about it, but in this world, in the current day and by two MC's who have a sexual past I want to either know about clean tests or condoms. End of. The fact that these two were strangers and not using condoms actually meant I put the book down and it took me some time to resume reading. Anyway now I've got that off my chest....

Then just 10% later I was at it again with the updates, this time it was;

"We, yeah, I'm pretty sure they know what jeans are in Scotland. I'm pretty sure my mum would have known what they were when she was growing up in Scotland 40+ years ago. I'm also pretty sure not all Scotsmen wear kilts on a daily basis, pretty much as sure as I am that Frenchmen, in the main, don't wear striped tops, berets and ride around on bicycles with onions round their necks. #stereotyping

So yeah, it's be fair to say some of the Scottish things annoyed me. Also the constant use of the word foogin' as opposed to fucking, (I guess). Sometimes writing an accent works...sometimes it doesn't. Many years ago I read Trainspotting and the whole thing is written in 'Scottish' -  that's to say it's written as the Scots speak, it took a few pages to get into but it worked, unfortunately for me it didn't in Nevada Highlander, I just got annoyed with it.

The other thing for me was I just found it a bit boring. I'm so sorry and I hate saying that, as I said the characters and setting were lovely but the plot line was a bit blah. It held the promise of being interesting but it just wasn't.

As always I will say that reading is a truly individual thing and what I might find boring someone else might love. There was nothing wrong with the actual writing itself, it was just for me the storyline.

A copy of this book was given to BMBR for an honest review.