Some of the earliest romances I read were by Teresa Medeiros. I remember staying up all night reading Charming the Prince. Medeiros is one of those authors who is abidingly constant in her writing. Sometimes it knocks me over and I have to lie there for awhile savoring the feeling, and sometimes I read it with a smile and a quick-moving eye, eager for more. While I didn’t read the vampire books she wrote, as they came at a time when I was Vamptired, I was very curious about The Devil Wears Plaid. Medeiros writes great dialogue, and has a way with plots where there’s very little stagnant time. She’s continually solid in her writing, and I love that her career spans so long with such strength.
When I saw this book, I was unsure whether to read it. I’m not normally a fan of Scottish romance. I love romances set in Ireland and Scotland, but I get very tired very quickly of the brogue, ye ken, lassie? Ach. It makes me irritable, it does. Really, if you want to transcribe brogue, try, like, a Proclaimers interview or something, and bring it and bring it ACH ALL THE WAY LASSIE. Scottish accents are some fine hotness, and the written version never really measures up.
So while I always remember Medeiros’ books favorably, I was hesitant to read this because of the ach and the wee and the language possibly driving me barmy. Ultimately, though I came away pleased that Medeiros is still writing solid and entertaining books, and not at all annoyed by the very light hand she employs with the transliterated (I think that would be the right word, or transcribed, perhaps) brogue. In fact, one of the funnier jokes in the book is based on the hero’s accent, and it’s worth the inclusion right there.
Emmaline Marlowe is at the altar, about to marry a decrepit older man to save her family’s financial stability and position in society, when Jamie Sinclair comes busting into the church on horseback, interrupts the wedding, and gets all The Graduate on the festivities (except he doesn’t know her personally), kidnapping Emma and riding away before anyone can do much of anything to stop him (he’s huge, and he’s on a horse after all).
Sinclair rides away with Emma, whom he does not know and doesn’t much care about, into the mountains of the highlands, where he plans to hold her for ransom until his lifelong enemy, the old goat fiancee, better known as the Earl of Hepburn, coughs up what Sinclair wants. Sinclair is surprised that Emma is rather brave, strong, and not cowed much by his treatment of her; he was expecting wailing and shrieking and fear (she is, ye ken, English and shit). Emma is not terribly surprised that Sinclair is a much more attractive man in her eyes but she’s horrified by how much she’s attracted to him, as she knows that the future of her sisters and her parents is solely on her shoulders, and those shoulders, along with the rest of her, need to marry the Earl of Oldness back down the mountain.
There’s layers of problems to be addressed and solved in this book – why is Emma’s family destitute? Why is she responsible for the solution and not her parents? Why is Sinclair so ready to ruin Hepburn’s wedding and possibly Emma as well? – and Emma and Sinclair are both entertaining characters to read about. This is a very friendly story for the reader: it’s easy to enter, easy to get carried away with Emma, easy and fun to read as an adventure story with a snowswept romance at its core. It’s not deeply and painfully emotional and it focuses very firmly on Emma and Sinclair.
The more I thought about the book after I finished it, though, the more I had questions as to how the happy ending came to be. The question of whether Emma’s ruined as soon as she’s out the door of the church and away from the eyesight of any reputable chaperone isn’t addressed really, and I kept picturing Emma like a new car driven off the lot – already worth 20% less the minute the tires leave the curb. Emma is already strong and brave, resourceful and resilient, and I liked her a lot – but she didn’t have far to go in terms of character development. She learns to be more vocal about her desires and in defense of herself, but in the end, everyone around her changes and adjusts to what should happen for her to have her happy ever after. I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve it; she does indeed. But she doesn’t have a long way to go in terms of growth and development, whereas many of the surrounding characters need to grow up, grow a pair, get over themselves, or all three.
Sinclair, on the other hand, is all hate and simmer, but when he meets Emma, he has to make room for the opposite of those emotions. He’s never hateful to Emma, but he carries a long, firm, solid… grudge (you thought I was going somewhere else with that, didn’t you?) and doesn’t place her above the revenge he has to settle against Hepburn. Ultimately, I thought the villainy and the revenge were a little too easily dealt with, and the emotional turmoil that Sinclair might have felt was resolved simply and painlessly, belying its narrative significance.
The Devil Wears Plaid is the romance novel equivalent of a pasttime. It’s not an obsession or a fixation when you read it, like some books are that you can’t put down or even take a deep breath while you’re reading. This book is pleasurable, enjoyable, and fun and friendly. Reading it means that you’ll likely smile and be taken along on the adventure with Sinclair and Emma for an escape and mental vacation that leaves you with a sigh and a grin at the end. It won’t rip your heart out, so if highly emotional historicals are your thing, this probably won’t blow your kilt up. If you are looking for a read that’s adventurous and entertaining, this is one you’ll enjoy, especially if you’re a Medeiros fan.
Guess what? I got me 10 copies to give away, lads and lassies. So – leave a comment with your favorite Scottish dialectical word or phrase – or food name! – and I’ll pick winners at random. Comments close at midnight Saturday 25 September. International entries welcome, and standard disclaimers apply. I’m not being compensated for this giveaway. I don’t own any plaid though I’m told I am of Scots descent. Your mileage may vary. Shake well. Refrigerate after opening. It is unlawful to whistle while chewing gum on Sundays.
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My husband and I went to a Robert Burns supper several years ago. A traditional part of the event is the presentation of the haggis. And before partaking of this … bit of Scottish traditional cuisine, the poem “Address To A Haggis” is read:
“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race!
Aboon them a’ yet tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’a grace
As lang’s my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin was help to mend a mill
In time o’need,
While thro’ your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin’, rich!
The poem continues for five more stanzas!
With apologies to anyone who can appreciate it, I have to say I tasted it and the haggis was nastier than I was prepared for so I spit it into my napkin. Ugh.
Aside from Robbie Burns, my favorite Scottish quote would have to be from Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer of the Starship Enterprise when listening to the warp engines groan…
“Mae bairnes, mae poor bairnes!”
They have all been said above..obviously over-used but well loved.. I’m a big fan of teresa medeiros, and cant wait to read this one!
So many good words, so little time.
One of my favorite words ever is “gloaming”, which I believe is actually Middle English but often crops up in Scottish songs and such.
Also:
bairn
brae
sporran
Sassenach
slainte
All this Burns makes me yearn for a plate of haggis, neaps and tatties, which, contrary to what most people say here, aren’t all that bad—as long as you’re eating them IN Scotland while a hot, kilted man plays “Scotland the Brave” on bagpipes right by your table. Dram of single malt optional but highly recommended.
I live in the Scottish Highlands (although I am not Scottish) and I generally cannot read a Scottish romance anymore. The faux Scots is often horrible but perhaps this one will change my mind! A bit like there is no ‘one’ American accent there are many different Scottish ones.
Jessica, Irn Bru is a bright orange soda (soft drink) much beloved as a hangover cure. Haggis is really no different to the stuff they put in sausages so don’t let it put you off visiting R.J. or trying it, it is really beautiful here(although it rains quite a lot!) The annual Burns supper with the address to the haggis and the toast to the lassies is a great event to be part of.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/burnsnight/running_order.shtml
For words or phrases I like (and that people use in everyday life)
‘Oh Bless’ (British more than Scottish)
Where do you stay? (Where do you live?)
Aye
Wee
Cock a leekie soup (delicious)
Kilts – definately sexy, especially when my husband wears one 🙂
I love all things Scottish! Some of my favourite sayings are:
Dinna fash
I dinna ken
Sassenach
laird
aye
Oatcake. I love how it sounds like something delicious, but it’s really not at all.
Well being of Irish descent, my favorite is more of a turn of phrase. growing up i got called maria girl or baby girl. Depending on the relative, well they do it now with my daughter, and I to it too. The boy is called well boy, do my dad would be called Danny-boy. or Johnny-Boy.
Loved it.
LOL
and Haggis.. Its gross the principle is gross, but its an awesome name.
Aaaah! Dialect! Can’t stand it when they try to do more than just a few scattered phrases.
I like “Ah Kanna____” fill in the blank with whatever “canna” be done.
I always liked “bluidy hell!” and “shite!”
LOL!
It’s the “ye ken” part that really gets me, not to copy one of the above comments. I love reading some books set in Scotland (or the equivalent, as in the Redwall kids’ series) because the pretend Scottish often times cracks. me. up. “Och! Me bairn!” is a runner up.
Och, hen, yer makin’ sic a clishmaclaver oer the wee buikie!
My favorite/most obscure Scottish word:
Pìobaireachd
(pronounced pea-brock) – it’s a type of bagpipe music.
Count me in for the classic kilt love. A good kilt can do wonders for me. Rawr. 🙂
OH. And ken. I love ken. I don’t know why, but KEN makes me ecstatic. Even though reading Scottish brogue is very…very tiresome overall.
Puggled is great!
I went on a very appetite-inducing hike in the Cairngorms, and followed it up with some Scotch broth soup in an almost sickenly atmospheric pub. The stuff tasted like the food of the gods.
My host mum also threw out this baked potatoes with all the fixings spread my first night that was to DIE. One does not expect to crawl out of the car, near to exhaustion after flying in from the States and travling from Glasgow to Perth and get serious food. It’s one of my favorite memories.
The more I think about it, I ate really well in Scotland; I could go on with food memories.
Aye, lassie! My favourite Scot is the terrier in The Lady and the Tramp, with his song about buryin’ his bonnie bonnie bone.
I’m sad, though, because I don’t actually want a physical copy of anything, and these give-aways are usually just that. Wish you could give away the e-book versions, too! Am putting this one on my e-wish list, anyway!
Sleekit.
It’s a great, perfectly visual word.
And next time you’re driving near the River Ythan, ask a Scotsman to pronounce the name for you. Just trust me 🙂
i’m a fan of “wheesht,” meaning quiet. As in “Will ye wheesht yourself?”
Also, pretty much anything said by Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men.
Haggis.
The word just sounds like something the cat hurked up at 2 AM all over your freshly washed sheets/towels/clothes.
Huuuh……Huhhhhh……Haggggiiiiiiiiiis
“Damnit kitty – not the duvet!”
I love Scottish romances too. I love anything anything scottish.
I love the saying bampot. Its just a scottish word for idiot or fool.
I love this Scottish saying: “S mairg a ni tarcuis air biadh – He who has contempt for food is a fool”
I’ve only tried one Scottish food. Scottish Tablet, it is a sweet Scottish fudge-like candy.
I am so using “wheesht” at the earliest opportunity.
Holly: I wish I could give away eCopies but alas, DRM makes that tricky. I’ll think of something….
Also: in yon inbox I found a guest review for this book that matches mine, so stay tuned for that—but the contest entries are only valid if they are comments on this review. (My Scottish words: ACH. And KEN. Also BARBIE.)
Hard to chose just one fabulous Scottish thing ….. probably kilts!
Dinna fash yourself—just typing it makes me giggle!
Please random generator gods, pick me!
These comments cover just about everything (even Irn Bru!), but I can’t leave off “David Tennant” and “Ewan McGregor.” Swoon.
What I like about ‘dinna’ is that I don’t hear it as a Scottish phrase so much as an Ethel Merman-esque NY/NJ accent with overtones of vaudeville in it. Which I then hear all of the hero’s dialogue in for a few seconds, and that gets funny pretty fast. To me, at least.
I also really like “fash,” as it just always always makes me think of corned beef hash. The kind that comes in a can and looks a little bit like Alpo. When a hero says “Dinna fash yourself” it’s almost like Ethel Merman is ordering whomever the hero is talking to to rub corned beef hash all over themselves.
Wean (pronounced wayyyyyne) is the other Scots word for a small child – I always think it’s more descriptive than bairn; it sort of sounds like a child crying. Pinkie is a great word too, and one that doesn’t really travel (even as far as England) – it’s your little finger!
Ooh, I’ve never read a Teresa Medeiros romance, but this sounds like a fun one to start with.
I loooooove Scottish accents, but am having a hard time thinking of any one word or phrase right now. I guess I’ll just have to go for “haggis”!
I’ve been known to fash myself on occasion.
Especially after a wee drop of the needful.
I will read Medeiros whether she writes about lairds, vampires, pirates, attorneys, witches, schoolmarms, or sheikhs. (I would fall over DED FROM HAPPIES if she wrote about all at once!)
David Tennant!!!!
All the scottish you ever need to know
RAWWWWWRRR….
Megan B: it’s not a rumour, it’s a fact.
Jessica: it’s rank, and I would not recommend it at all, even though some of my friends claim that it possesses restorative powers the morning after the night before are miraculous. How much alcohol the average Scot drinks may have something to do wth the amount of Irn Bru consumed…
Kristi Luchi: it’s pronounced ‘bear-n’, not ‘bar-rin’…
Ditto to everything Chani said.
I wonder how many people who claim that the very idea of haggis makes them ill would eat sausages? No grosser than that, I promise!
I grew up in Hong Kong but now live in Edinburgh. At first, the phrase ‘where do you stay?’ (meaning ‘where do you live’) threw me, but now it just makes me smile. Driech needs practically no explanation: a dull, grey, chilly, drizzly but not outright rainy day…‘twas a driech day in Auld Reekie (Edinburgh) today, I tell you!
Far and away my favourite Scots word, though, is boak, more often used with the qualifier dry (as in ‘the dry boak’), it can mean gag/heave/vomit, depending on context. Something may give you the boak, or make you boak, but there is no such thing as a boak.
Part of the reason why it is my favourite is the fact that one of my best friends, a Dundonian, takes the piss out of me whenever I attempt to say it: apparently, I talk too posh to be taken seriously. It’s enough to make me crabbit old woman of me, I tell ye!
I love Teresa Medeiros’ books, even the vampire ones (although the first is better than the second). She should write more time-traveling romances as well.
Aside from haggis (on the list of foods I refuse to ever try) and kilt checks (from the Renaissance faires), the only thing that has stayed with me is the bit of “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough” by “the poet Burns” as Jeeves would say:
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
which every student had to memorize before reading John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”.
I adore all things Scottish and come by it naturally having 9 different clans running in my wee veins. Favorite saying would be Sassenach, and our pups are “wee beasties”.
tell84: I could easily tell 84 family history stories all involving Scottish somethings in our past.
Really, Jerusha? I thought everyone called their little fingers their pinkies!
A lifetime ago a friend and I decided to travel by train in Scotland. We got to Aberdeen and taking the ferry to Orkney (in March so we were pretty frozen), then back down to Inverness, taking the train through the Great Glen to Skye, and back to Edinburgh. Our last night the owners of our B&B told us about a ceilidh, pronounced kaylee, which is a dance. Please tell me if that pronunciation is not correct. It is surely the origin of what we call square dancing and so much fun. Some of the men came in kilts, undoubtedly to pick up the tourists, but others just came to dance. I was whirled around most of the night by a retired military man who was thrilled when he realized I knew alot of the steps because I had learned square dancing.
My favorite British saying, or at least I learned it from an ex from Great Britain – pear-shaped. As in “Everything was going fine and then it went pear-shaped.”
My favorite is wee! It is so funny to hear grown men use that word!
I love Scottish accents, they’re oh so sexy! And here a few fun sayings I ran across:
-Black as the Earl of Hell’s Waistcoat! – Pitch black
-Skinny Malinky Longlegs! – A tall thin person
-I’m fair puckled! – I’m short of breath
-Yer bum’s oot the windae – You’re talking rubbish
Rumbledethumps…the Scottish version of bubble and squeak…I love saying “rumbledethumps” and also enjoy eating it (leftover cabbage/roast/veggies/potatoes—fried up together for breakfast)
I have a particular weakness for ‘lass’. And if it’s ‘bonny lass’, so much the better, 🙂
One of my best friends is about to start grad school at St. Andrews, and I’m insanely jealous at all the pictures she’s been posting this week while she settles in. I do believe I’ll have to fly over and crash on her couch for a week or so, at this rate…
Bonnie. It’s classic, timeless, and cute.
Bonnie. I love me some bonnie shit.