Kara Griffin, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463470367
Historical Romance, 2020

Kara Griffin’s The Seduction of Laird Sinclair may be $0.99, but this is not a short story. It’s the first entry in the author’s Lairds of the North series, so this $0.99 is sort of like an introductory price to get people to buy it and hopefully get hooked.

First, the story. Violet Danvers is desperate. Her husband was executed as a traitor to the English crown, and the loathsome Sir Nicholas Colfax, who has close ties to King Richard and hence is a man used to getting his way, naturally wants her to put out.

She refuses, because he has been thoughtless enough to commit some faux pas that a beau shouldn’t do, such as killing her father and burning her family house down, but King Richard decrees that she will marry that charming fellow and basically stay under house arrest for the rest of her life. He also holds her daughter Cora as political hostage, so now Violet is stuck.

Fortunately, the king’s cousin Henry is a nice guy that helps her run off to Scotland, telling her to use her wiles to seduce a friend of Henry, Callum Sinclair, into letting her stay with him.

Wait, this plan sounds horribly convoluted. Why is this necessary again?

“Sinclair needs you.”

She sighed and lowered her face. “Why does Sinclair need me?”

He raised her chin and gazed at her eyes with a serious expression. “He was broken of spirit and in a sorrowful state when last I saw him. But I trust he’s recovered, at least, that is my hope. I came to respect him and revered his strength and gallantry. Sinclair will keep you safe, and I won’t worry about you. You’ll be well away from London, Richard, and Colfax. Be sure to win Sinclair, Violet, and hold no guilt, for Charles would want you to be happy.”

Wow. She’s desperate, has nowhere to go and no one to turn to, and darling Henry decides to pimp her out to some sad sack fellow she has never met.

She nodded. “Will I be happy with this man―?”

Oh, she needs to find a way to save her daughter, but first, will he be the one to twist all her happy dials right? A lady has priorities, after all.

Oh ya, I forgot to say earlier: Callum is married. It’s okay, the wife is a cold sort that doesn’t like putting out to him, and it’s totally her fault even if it was an arranged marriage, he was absent throughout most of it, and he also didn’t do anything to win her over.

So, this wife is quickly killed off during a clan crisis that sees his brother killed and him becoming laird, and she is pregnant with someone else’s brat too when she got her just desserts. This will teach her to stand in the way of a real man and a woman that puts out to him whenever and every time he wants some.

I have to hand it to the author here: she has other secondary characters drag Callum for being a sad crybaby acting like he is the most tragic human being in existence, as the rest of his clan suffers from a lack of leadership. However, this doesn’t really do much to the overall plot as Callum continues to act like he has to stay away from everyone, even his young daughter that will definitely need a parent at a time of crisis, because, you know, he is the most important thing in the universe.

The rest of the story unfurls as expected: Violet does her motherly thing to the daughter and wins the hearts of the people around the place, and Callum continues to mope and pout like a most unattractive big baby. Fortunately, he finds his backbone back through the power of wholesome honeypot, and it certainly seems like Violet has forgotten that she has left her own daughter behind.

There is strong sense of disconnect here between the gravity of the situations affecting the main characters and the way they react to these situations.

Callum’s clan has lost its leader and the new laird can’t even pass out letters with instructions or something. No, Callum hides out and spends so much of this story feeling sorry for himself that I can’t take him seriously as a supposedly capable warrior and leader. Violet has to do so much work to gain his trust and affection, and I can only wonder whether any woman would put up with this big moping baboon if they weren’t supposedly in desperate straights like our heroine.

Oh yes, I said “supposedly” because the conflicts that drive Violet to Scotland seem to magically evaporate the moment she arrives and has to take up the roles of mother and babysitter to both Callum and his daughter. I check, and no, she didn’t fall and had amnesia on her way north, although I am leaning towards this theory because she displays very little sense of urgency or desperation for someone in her situation. If she stopped caring because she now has a new daughter and a crybaby husband, that didn’t reflect well on her at all.

The author’s narrative style is very readable, although I should point out to readers that are picky about these things that there are some modern words peppered here and there in these characters’ dialogues. It’s just that she also seemed to have forgotten, along with Violet, the conflicts that drove Violet up north. She also has Callum being a sad useless buffoon for way too long until it made that character come off like an absolute tosser and loser.

In other words, the author should have picked a far less, shall I say, “intense” premise if she wanted her characters to enact the usual “sassy but loving English damsel in a surly but hot laird’s big castle” song and dance.

As it is, the treatment of the story only makes both the hero and heroine come off as characters that prioritize their own self-indulgent feelings over the welfare and safety of the people that depend on them. Sadly, that’s a big yikes all around.