Book Review

The Devil Wears Plaid by Teresa Medeiros

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.

This book is available from:
  • Available at Amazon
  • Order this book from apple books

  • Order this book from Barnes & Noble
  • Order this book from Kobo
  • Order this book from Google Play

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!

The Devil Wears Plaid by Teresa Medeiros

View Book Info Page

Comments are Closed

  1. KellyM says:

    Do Scots use “…and Bob’s your uncle” to wrap up a story, or is that just Aussies?  Because I’m pretty sure that’s my favorite.

  2. Laurel says:

    My favorite Scottish place was always “The Braes of Yarrow,” from the ballad.  I’m not quite sure what braes are, and I think yarrow is some kind of plant, but it sure sounds atmospheric.

  3. willaful says:

    My husband imitating the Scottish guy from “Blackadder’s Christmas Carol” saying “Cheeriebye” turns me into an absolute puddle.

  4. Nadia says:

    Belhaven.  As in the Scottish Ale.  Yum.

    If served to me by Gerard Butler, even better.

  5. Merrian says:

    I too join in the love for Gerard Butler and Ewan McGregor in their natural speaking voices and does anyone remember Robert Carlyle’s Hamish Macbeth TV series?
    I was in the Aussie Army for a long time and one of the slang terms we had was ‘flying dirk’ as in ‘beware of the flying dirk’ that is; ‘beware someone is out to get you’. ‘Dirking’ someone was to speak badly of them.
    If you want to indulge in Robbie Burns and wonderful Scottish accent then listen to singer Eddi Reader (born Sadenia Reader which is a wonderful romance heroine’s name). Eddi has a couple of albums of Burn’s songs.  The latest is an album which commemorates the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns’ birth, bringing together the original Burns album with seven additional songs, two from the original 2003 sessions (“Green Grow the Rashes O”, “Of A’ the Airts”), three from 2007’s Peacetime (“Ye banks and Braes”, “Aye Waukin O” and “Leezie Lindsay”) the unreleased “Dainty Davie”, also from that session, and a brand new recording, “Comin’ Thro The Rye/Dram Behind the Curtain” (Thanks to Wikipedia for the details).

  6. Sena says:

    Bannocks
    Like a oatmeal pancake, very tasty

  7. StarOpal says:

    To quote Whose Line’s Colin Mochrie:
    Och but they can take me haggis!



  8. Sandra says:

    One of my favorite Scotland set novels is an ancient one by Paula Allardyce—The Rebel Lover (Johnny Danger in the English edition). It was first published in 1960. My copy was issued by Playboy Press in the ‘70’s. Johnny has a such a lovely way with words.

    And from even earlier—Mary Stewart’s Wildfire at Midnight, set in Skye.

    miles77: how far I’d travel for a Stewart e-book. Why, oh why, are they not available digitally?

  9. Sounds like a great book and an author I’ll have to look up.

    Being a soccer-mom in my spare time, there was once a Scottish boy on my daughter’s team whose mother loved to yell during the game. Whenever anyone missed a goal try or let a goal in, she would yell “UNLUCKY!!” I can never hear the word “unlucky!” now without thinking of it delivered at top volume and in a lovely Scottish accent. (I love me a Scottish accent.) We’ve even adopted it into our own family vocabulary.

  10. Cathy B says:

    Tossing the Caber.

    Which sounds hideously rude, but is in fact a Scottish sport involving large beardy men in kilts throwing tree trunks around.

    (Seriously. Look on YouTube for the Highland Games. Awesomely kilty, beardy, tree-trunk tossing).

  11. Sybylla says:

    It’s a tough call for me between “swithering” (sounds dirty; just means dithering) and “sgiomlaireachd” (according to Bill Bryson’s translation, “the habit of dropping in at mealtimes”).

    I like “sgiomlaireachd” more, but “swithering” is vastly more practical to include in one’s actual speech.

  12. Literary Slut Kilian says:

    My favorite words are “swive” and “gormless,” as in “that gormless fool is swiving a sheep!”  More than the dialect, though, I love the music. Gets me every time.

    My favorite Burns song is Ae Fond Kiss, a song of lovers parting.  I think it is the perfect melding of words and music, and I get misty whenever I listen to any recording of it.  Here are my favorite verses:

    Had we never loved sae kindly,   
    Had we never loved sae blindly,   
    Never met—or never parted,    15
    We had ne’er been broken-hearted.   

    Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!   
    Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!   
    Thine be ilka joy and treasure,   
    Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!

    Here’s a youtube link to a lovely rendition:



  13. kilt -because it makes me wonder… *grin*

  14. Kris B says:

    wee.  I know what it means, but it’s always about half way through the book before I can read it without my 3 year old definition jumping to mind first.

  15. Catherine says:

    I can’t give you a Scots phrase, but I can’t resist mentioning that badly-transliterated Scots accents have a very fine pedigree… I organise a group of friends to do Shakespeare readings every month or so, and if there was one thing Will of Stratford loved nearly as much as a penis joke, it was a bad accent joke.

    Henry V is particularly egregious for this – you get transliterated Scots, Irish and Welsh all in the same scene (which may, just possibly, contain one or two racial stereotypes as well).  When we read it, all the people reading French characters decided that it wasn’t fair for the characters from the British Isles to have all the fun and began sporting Outrrrrageous French Accents too, and what with all of Falstaff’s lot insisting on speaking cockney… ye ken, it wasna a purty sight, lassies…

  16. Sarah says:

    My favourite Scottish phrase is one my Granny used to yell at us when we were being bad.

    “Oh, ya wee bugger, I’ll give you a thick ear!”

  17. Sarah says:

    ‘Ya ken, lassie?’

  18. ks says:

    I’ve got nothing.  Really, everyone has already got all the good ones.  So I’ll just say that I wouldn’t kick David Tennant out of bed for eating haggis.  Or anything else, really.

  19. Linda says:

    My favorite is “First-footer.”  That’s the first visitor to your house in the New Year.  It’s most lucky for the first-footer to be a dark-haired man bringing a gift.  Our neighbor is a Scotsman, so we’ve enjoyed this tradition for years at our New Year’s Eve parties, even to the point of locking the dark-haired husbands outside with their Scotch just before midnight, then letting them back in just after.

  20. Jazzlet says:

    Haggis is very tasty, good on a baked potato maybe with a pint of Belhaven 80/- (that’s shilling).

    Have to say that pinkie, pear-shaped, tup, Bob’s yer uncle, and gormless aren’t particularly Scottish, you could hear them in many parts of the UK. And the Scots wouldn’t call for Scotch they’d call for a particular whisky as they mostly don’t believe anyone else can actually make the water of life.

    Brae means hillside.

    My absolutely favourite scottish person is Charles Rennie Macintosh and my favourite place Hill House which he designed for the publisher Blackie. It isn’t one of these enourmous piles you’d need a troop of servants to run, it’s a spacious family home and is so beautiful I cried. I still hanker after the latch plates …

  21. Beth Lewis says:

    Shiver me Haggis!  Scottish pirates would be HAWT!

  22. Kelly says:

    @HelenMac – it’s true, wrapping haggis is pastry only makes it tastier!

    @Laurel – braes are hills, and Yarrow is near Selkirk, in the Scottish borders – at least that’s where the Yarrow Water is.

  23. Milena says:

    It doesn’t seem particularly Scottish when written, but I’m fond of “giving a cat’s lick”—cleaning something quickly and not very thoroughly.

  24. Brooke says:

    An old favorite, but there is nothing like a well-placed (or obnoxiously ubiquitous) “dinna ye ken?”

  25. Lindsay says:

    Bollocks! Yup that is the first word that popped into my head ……..I definitely have to go with bollocks!

  26. Lynda says:

    I love Medieros, but normally avoid Scottish novels, or “Dinna and canna” stories as I usually call them…

    But in her case I will be happy to make an exception.

  27. Renee says:

    “Scunnered” is one of my favourites, meaning “gobsmacked”, and I think it’s particular to Glasgow. And when I leave work in the rain, my assistant manager always reminds me to make sure I have my ‘brolly’.

  28. Marie says:

    I do love me some Scottish romance so I have to throw my hat in the ring!  Nothing new to add as far as fun phrases – “dinna fash” and “ye ken” are probably my favorites.

    zipper88?  Kilts don’t have 88 or even 1 zipper, silly – that’s what makes them fun! 😛

  29. Michaella says:

    “Ah dinnae ken” and “och” are my favorites.  In high school my friends and i tried to make an acronym out of OCH to name a club.  It turned out to be utter nonsense, but fun nonetheless.

  30. KinseyHolley says:

    “No’-As-Big-As-Medium-Sized-Jock-But-Bigger-than-Wee-Jock Jock” – from Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series. I love the Wee Free Men.

    Off topic bragging: My daughter’s Episcopal school has a Scottish arts program – the high school pipe and drum band has won the World Championships a couple times and the Highland dance team has had nationally (and internationally) ranked members. (Which explains why my Diva knows the words to Scotland the Brave.)

    You must watch this. The Scottish Rant from Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place:


    (“It looked like I was gonna have to spend the night in Glasgow.” “Jesus Christ!”)

  31. Kira says:

    I’m partial to the exclaimations made by the “pictsies” in Terry Pratchett’s book Wee Free Men: they exclaim ” Crivens!”

  32. Muse of Ire says:

    Ooh, lots of good ones here. All my favorites have been covered. “Braw”—“that’s a fine braw handsome man ye’ve got there, lassie.” “Sassenach”—I think the “-ach” sound at the end gives it that extra fine edge of contempt. “Pear-shaped” is not exclusively Scottish, and not very old—its origins are unknown, but many think it’s RAF slang from WWII.

    The best skewering of the “ooh, Scottish accent, how classy!” trope I ever read was one of Sharyn McCrumb’s Elizabeth Macpherson series. Elizabeth eats up the antagonist’s claim to be an aristocrat (she says her father’s “the Duke of Edinburgh,” snort), but it’s clear to anyone who’s ever read a few English novels that she’s a hardscrabble Glaswegian or something like that.

    “life45”—that was 5 years ago, try to keep up!

  33. Katie says:

    In no particular order:

    Kilt—because it’s a kilt and that is inherently awesome on so many level

    Haggis—“Ye want some haggis, lassie?” No, no, no….thank you though!

    Och—I’m not sure this is a word so much as a pained grunt.

    Nessie—how can one talk about Scotland and not talk about Nessie??

  34. KinseyHolley says:

    Muse: That reminds me of a Fraser episode. Daphney’s layabout brother, played by Anthony LaPaglia, comes to visit. He’s got this broad, nearly unintelligible working class accent and Roz coos “You sound just like the Prince of Wales!”  He sounded more like the teenage hooker from Britain’s Got Talent. Yorkshire, I fink she is…

  35. Jan says:

    Och, wee lassie – and anything Gabaldon has coming out of the mouth of Jamie Sinclair in the Outlander series!

  36. nitnot says:

    Every language or culture has a different way of saying “I love you”. Many does not even use the word love, and often it is not as simple as three words. So my favorite, which I learned from Lisa Kleypas’ Devil In Winter, has to be:

    “Tha Gad Agam Ort”
    “My Love Is Upon You”

    I love how it sounds as if the feeling just floats up in the air and lands from one heart to another’s.

    And, I have almost every Medeiros’ books in my library. I hope this one will be in my collection too! My faves are Nobody’s Darling and A Kiss To Remember. Angsty romances, bring it on.

  37. Nan says:

    I dinnae ken if this counts as actual Scottish dialect but I am enthralled by the character Malcolm, as played by Peter Capaldi in the brilliant works of Armando Iannucci, the movie “In the Loop” and the TV show “The Thick of It” (worth getting a multiregion DVD player for!). Malcolm is Scottish and extremely profane and my favorite saying of his is: fuckety-bye!

    I wish I could bust that one out at work, but it’s just not appropriate at the library.

  38. christine says:

    Weighing in on the ”  Laoghaire” discussion. After having spent some time in Ireland, seeing that name that sounded so exotic to me when I first read the book makes me laugh.  Dún Laoghaire or Dunleary as pretty much everyone pronounces and spells it is a suburb of Dublin that I primarily think of as “where you catch the ferry.” totally prosaic and probably makes any Irish readers of Gabaldon laugh. I suspect it would be the equivalent of a European author naming a female character “Nantucket” or “Woonsocket” and making us New Englanders giggle every time we saw it.

  39. Char says:

    There can be only one.

  40. Char says:

    clicked too soon to give credit. That quote would be from Highlander series (TV) which was lovely viewing.

Comments are closed.

↑ Back to Top