Avon, $7.99, ISBN 978-0-06-291364-7
Historical Romance, 2021

Captain Andrew St James is one of the three blokes in line to inherit the title of the Duke of Carlyle and all the goodies that come with it. However, the current duke is still alive, if mentally not there, and the duke’s fearsome mom has Drew on a test run of sorts: he needs to be respectable, shape up, learn what needs to be learned to become a proper and responsible duke, and get married.

I’ve explained the whole thing in more detail in the review of Caroline Linden’s first book in the Desperately Seeking Duke series, About a Rogue, so read all about it there.

Now, Drew is ecstatic to be the likely next Duke of Carlyle. With his current allowance from the estate, he can leave the army and see to it that his mother, a shopkeeper, and his sisters can all get set up for a more cozy life. Propriety and responsibilities? They are his middle names, so what’s the big deal?

Well, on a weekend getaway during his time back in Edinburgh, he meets a bewitching lady at a bar, and their kiss is amazing… and then she slips away and he is left with happy memories and not a small amount of sexual frustration.

Fortunately, this is a romance story, so all the hot and sexy people are in a six degrees of separation thing. In this case, it’s more like a first degree: our widow heroine Isla Ramsay is a good friend of Drew’s sister Agnes, and the only reasons he doesn’t know her name are: (a) he’s away from Edinburgh in ages and (b) his BFF thinks it’d be cute to let him discover on his own that the woman he’s mooning after is a very wealthy and hence most eligible lady in town.

Isla doesn’t want another man in her life, though. With her husband’s death, she’s finally free to experience life on her own terms for once, and she isn’t keen to go back to being under the thumb of a man that will dictate everything she can and can’t do. She already has that from her aunt and her father, and the solicitor managing her money doesn’t even bother to entertain her requests. Women, after all—it’s so cute what they start having this notion that they can think for themselves.

A Scot to the Heart starts out so, so good. Everything falls into place perfectly: Isla and Drew have lots of chemistry, their interactions are so sweet and tender, and the characters are a dream—Isla, especially.

Our heroine is a good example of a heroine that wants to explore her newfound freedom, if we can call it that, but she finds that she still has many rules imposed her. Her father and her solicitor still act like she doesn’t and shouldn’t have any thought germinating in her pretty head, and women such as her aunt and the aunt’s friends expect her to conform to the same rules that they are subjected to. It frustrates her, but she can only push back so much, as a part of her that is so used to playing by the rules still makes her want to please her father and aunt.

Drew is a more standard romance hero: he’s that responsible fellow that secretly yearns to let loose and let his hair down. However, he’s a rarity of sorts in that he’s also the responsible family man, instead of the usual cold and distant sorts that his type tends to be. His main concerns her, aside from getting into Isla’s bloomers, is that his family needs time to get used to the upheavals that his good fortune has brought to their lives.

Aside from the annoying eldest sister Agnes that captures the typical dimwit romance heroine sort (“I don’t want money, because I’m a bitter grump upset that I’m not humping the man that I want but act all cold and sulky toward!”), the rest of the women in his family are keen to settle in, but at the same time they are tad uncertain about what the future will bring. Working class folks don’t magically settle into living among aristocratic sorts, after all.

Then it happens. I’m not sure what prompts the author to do it, but somewhere around the midpoint of the story, all character arc is thrown aside for the heroine’s father being accused of the thefts and break-ins in the neighborhood, and that man just vanishes. Everyone thinks the man is a criminal, and of course our heroine can’t have that, because daddy is forever, even when the man in question never treats her better than he would a dumb puppy.

The story then moves down a familiar part of our heroine running into figurative walls in her efforts to clear her father’s name—understandable, as she is a woman, after all, and society at that time doesn’t pay much heed to what they want or need. This gives our hero the chance to flex his authority and social clout, so that readers can be assured that he is an alpha male with a 25-inch dong, worthy to protect the heroine forever and ever, amen.

I normally won’t have any issue with that hero flexing his alpha peen bit, as it’s something to be expected when I read a romance story. However, this development also means that the heroine’s arc to finding herself and flexing her independence has been summarily shoved aside for a more standard one, in which she needs the hero to help her clear her beloved daddy’s name.

Worse, despite everything her father and aunt have put her through, she still loves them no matter what by the end. She also forgives the villain because she understands why he’s that way. The true villain here is her father, if you ask me, but the story pushes this hard-to-swallow conclusion in which the heroine becomes one of those unrealistic saint-like types that forgive, forgive, forgive everyone and everything with zero hard feelings evident at all. A character with some depths at the beginning of the story has flattened into this… thing… and I’m predictably not too pleased with that development.

Worst of all is how her character arc is resolved in a “Yay, my new husband will let me have fun adventures, so in the end, marriage is awesome, daddy is forever, the end!” manner.

The first half or so of A Scot to the Heart is one of the best books that Karen Ranney hadn’t written in ages (and I mean that as a compliment), so my disappointment is amplified when it happens. I’m not mad that it happens, I’m dismayed by how it plays out.

I’m giving this one three oogies on the strength of the early parts of the story, but I don’t see myself rereading this one anytime soon, at least not without some strong libation by my side. Perhaps my reaction to this baby wouldn’t be so melodramatic if those early parts had been mediocre, but alas, they are so good. I won’t regret reading those parts, but oh, for the later half or so to be drastically revamped to give the main characters a proper sendoff!