The Wild Rose Press, $5.00
Paranormal Romance, 2007
Scottish Whispers is written in a manner that I find too melodramatic for my liking. It is hard to get into the story before I find myself often wincing at the way things often take the turn for the most melodramatic.
Our heroine Jena Jenkins is still torn over the death of her husband Ted. He loved her but she married him out of gratitude more than love and now it eats her up inside that she never learned to love him back before he died. As the story progresses, Jena finds herself in some A Christmas Carol-style “your past, your present, ooh” event before bumping into the arrogant Scottish hero Erick MacClyne. Plenty of angst follows.
“Oh Ted, I’m so sorry. Sorry I wasn’t there to stop your death and sorry I never loved you the way you should have been.” Her heart felt as if it was full of stones, her mind jumbled from fear and uncertainty.
“I wanted to love you, truly I did. No matter what I did, I couldn’t. I swore to myself I would never be with another, but again, another promise broken.” She was determined to come clean even if it was only to his grave.
“I met someone Ted, someone I fell in love with. He is so much more than I could have ever imagined. I gave him my heart and soul even though I tried not to. I’m so, so sorry. Sorry I failed you in every way possible.” Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks, her heart an open sore that refused to heal. She was only half alive and she knew it. She wasn’t stupid enough to not admit that she’d left all that was her back in Scotland. Back with Erick.
“Please forgive me. Forgive me for finding someone and giving him my heart, though he doesn’t know. I’ll pay for it for the rest of my life, alone and half alive. Be at peace Ted and haunt me no more. I beg of you.”
“I’ll pay for it for the rest of my life, alone and half alive”? Goodness, this is one of those times where it probably isn’t unkind to tell the heroine that Ted is dead and she should just snap out of her pity party and move the bloody hell on.
The problem with Scottish Whispers is that where Jena is concerned, everything she experiences, feels, or undergoes is amplified to ridiculously dramatic proportions to the point that the story is constantly in a feverish near-hysterical pitch. I feel really tired after a few chapters of Jena’s Always! Melodramatic!! Angst!!! and a whole book of Such!!!! DRAMA!!!!! is really too much for me. The above excerpt is from towards the later part of the story, mind you, so it’s not as if things will improve later on. Even early on, a mere disagreement between Jena and her friend when it comes to their choice of movie is amplified to become a angst-ridden showcase of Jena’s drama-filled anguish over love, life, and guys.
This book is so exhausting to read; it’s like dealing with someone who’s constantly telling me her sad stories in the most hysterical manner and just won’t stop even when my eyes start to glaze over. After a while, enough is enough.
