Highland Summer
By Elizabeth Hawksley

     Robina Drummond is used to being a poor relation, and has supported herself by acting as a lady's companion for several years. Her wealthy, greedy relatives in their new gothic castle know that she is likely to get invited to visit Lord and Lady Invershiel if she is staying with them so she finds herself invited for the summer. The reason for this is for Robina's relatives, the Penicuiks, to marry off their eligible daughter, while the noble but impoverished Invershiels are keen to marry off the elder of their two sons. Then there is the fascinating widower Edward Mountsorrel who is staying with them…Robina is going to have an interesting summer, and where does Duncan Penicuik's illegitimate son fit into the picture?

     If you find standard romances a bit thin and yearn for something with a bit more stuffing then this book might fit the bill. Crowded into this admirably slim volume are snippets from Robina's diary, descriptions of castle life in the Highlands, in the poor quarter of Inverness and even in the Far East as Edward travels looking for plants. Robina, thirty-two and happily single until romance beckons, comes over as a delightfully self-assured woman, holding her own in a man's world and amid the wealthy women for whom she works. It is a pleasant change to read about a heroine who seems so buoyant, and also so refreshingly real. None of the heroes behave like the domineering alpha male so beloved of romantic fiction, and the way all the plot strands come even closer together is both suspenseful and satisfying. This is also a good way of describing this enjoyable novel.