Scarsdale Publishing, $2.99
Historical Romance, 2019

Redemption by Tarah Scott and April Holthaus is the second entry in their Highland Brides of Skye series, but it can stand alone on its own quite well.

Then again, the story isn’t particularly deep or much else, to be honest, so it doesn’t really have that many legs to stand on in the first place.

Our heroine, Helena Donald, is said to be a master thief. Now, had she been a guy, this claim would likely hold true. Because she is a romance heroine, alas, this story opens with her on her latest mission, to steal a great treasure… and being hopelessly lost, dazed, exhausted, and oops, watch as she faints. I don’t know what happened, maybe she just charged out into the snowy evening in her excitement without remembering to do research or bring along some supplies.

Sigh, romance heroines, I tell you. Sure, they work cheap, or free if you have even a little leverage over them, but there is always a 99.9% chance of imminent disaster unless a brave, strong man is around to save these women from themselves.

Hey, hello there, Kaden MacLeod. Conveniently enough, he lives nearby enough for his inner GPS to lead him to Helena. Cue the usual hero nurses the heroine back to health, and predictably enough, the hero is tied to the heroine’s quest, so she starts getting flummoxed because now she is torn between her life and her new beau. 

Seriously, I don’t know why the authors can’t even let Helena keep even a small shred of her dignity.

After her embarrassing entrance in the story, poor Helena proceeds to demonstrate that she isn’t much good at anything else. The authors won’t even allow the poor simple fool to come up with the plan that will free her from the villain; it is Kaden that has to tell her, in painstaking step-by-step clarity so that she won’t miss anything, to do that.

Hence, the romance heroine has no use here aside from being in trouble so that the hero can save her and being unable to do anything so that the hero can show her what to do to solve her problems. 

That aside, Helena and Kaden do get along quite well, although it’s hard to buy the fact that these two go from strangers to OMG besties and soulmates in what seems like a matter of days. Kaden doesn’t have much to do here other than to play Helena’s Mr Fix-It, but he’s okay. 

“Okay” is basically my reaction to the whole story. The issue here is that the heroine is set up to have this conflict that is supposed to tear at her conscience and what not, but the whole thing isn’t very dramatic or interesting. After all, the hero just has to come up with a pretty obvious solution and the heroine pulls it off without any difficulties, and then all is well. It’s pretty anticlimactic, all things considered. 

So, this is an alright story to be read on autopilot. The plot hinges on the “master thief” heroine being dependent on the hero for almost everything, but if the reader can roll with that, the end result is an okay read. Just don’t expect too much and the chances of being disappointed will be lowered!