This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Nerdalisque. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Best First Book, Long Contemporary category.

Here is Nerdalisque's review:

Contemporary romances aren’t usually my thing, but Tom Hiddleston is. That made this book sound like catnip – a handsome movie star retreats to a seaside town in Scotland when he needs a break from the limelight. My mind was already picturing Hiddles in a kilt and heavy cable-knit sweater, his cheeks ruddy from the cold wind, his . . . um, yeah. I also liked that the heroine is a journalist who’s let her career go and is now faced with the opportunity of a lifetime – solving the mystery of where the sexiest man alive goes when he disappears.

But the catnip withered and died. If I hadn’t signed up to review the book, it would have been a DNF before I’d gotten to the 50-page mark. I’ll be blunt: this book, part of the Kilts and Quilts series, doesn’t live up to its nominations for RITA awards in two categories. If you don’t want to read the full rant, here’s the take-home message. The heroine isn’t likeable. Most of the other characters are flat. The romance isn’t engaging. The writing is mediocre. The Scottish setting is essentially irrelevant.

Sorry, Hiddles darling. This isn’t the role for you.

Let the rant begin.

Cait and Graham, who have never met, both hail from the tiny fishing village of Gandiegow. Graham must be significantly older, because he has a secret son, Duncan, who Cait babysat when she was a girl. It turns out that all the (extremely trustworthy) villagers know about Duncan, though, because they raised him when Graham hid him there while pursuing his career. Duncan’s mother walked away from them both, part of a depressing theme of abandonment that pervades the book. Duncan has a son, Mattie, whose mother abandoned them as well.

Cait has a strained relationship with her grandmother, Deydie, who feels abandoned because Cait’s father took the family to America even though Cait’s mother (Deydie’s daughter) had been diagnosed with cancer. Cait’s mother died, leaving Cait alone in a new country. Cait’s unfaithful husband died in the arms of his mistress, which is the event that precipitates her return to Scotland. (There are more deaths as the story progresses.) Cait believes that God has abandoned her and Death is following her wherever she goes.

Plot-wise, the main plot – there are as many subplots as there are threads in a quilt – revolves around Cait’s desire to reclaim her career. She had completely given it up for her husband, who wanted a wife devoted to keeping the perfect house and impressing his colleagues. The central conflict is Cait planning how to unearth all of Graham’s secrets and sell him out — she pitches the story to People magazine immediately after meeting him. Graham’s pegged her for a journalist from the moment they met, and starts setting traps for her. Of course, their insta-lust complicates things, leading to a lot of agonizing by Cait. Other subplots include Cait and irascible Deydie (the most likeable character in the book) trying to reconcile, the activities of the ladies’ quilting group, and a character being diagnosed with a fatal disease.

And did I mention there’s a puppy?

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t succeed in making Cait sympathetic. Instead, she comes across as whiny and self-centered. She isn’t TSTL, but TATL – Too Annoying To Like – from page one, when her taxi leaves her standing in a dark parking lot (shouldn’t that be “car park?”) in the snow. She whines about ruining her “metallic Brian Atwood heels” (Google tells me that his shoes go for about $1,000 a pair), but on page two whines about having to deal with four “hefty” suitcases. Good gods, woman! You could have changed shoes in the taxi.

I’d be here all day trying to summarize everything that bothered me, so I’m not going to try. But here are my messages to a friend as I was reading:

Of course the hero is an accomplished bagpiper.

And 60 pages in, a beloved elderly dog is dying.

Did I mention this is set at Christmas?

Now the crotchety grandma “grabbed the chicken by the back leg” so she could cut it up. “Back” leg? Scottish chickens must be bred for extra drumsticks.

Oooh!!!! Puppy!!!!

A bitchy blonde buxom barmaid has her eye on the hero!

Grandma is baking Christmas stollen. It’s apparently a little known fact that Scots love German baked goods.

We have a plot moppet!. Who’s MUTE. Yes. Traumatized. Mute. Child.

Argh!!! Would somebody Please. Use. Their. Words.

Aaaaaaannnndddd now there’s cancer.

By this point, I pretty much gave up. I only finished the book because I had volunteered to review it.

The writing is serviceable, but unpolished – random POVs from supporting characters; people arguing or accusing or defending instead of simply saying; predictable developments telegraphed well in advance. Occasionally it’s unintentionally funny or awkward to the point of being painful. The book would benefit from a professional edit.

I barely made it past page 34, where I almost threw the book across the room and poured myself a stiff shot of Scotch. The author described Graham as wearing a CODPIECE with his kilt. Where exactly was this codpiece? Dangling empty on the outside of the kilt? Peeking out from the hem? Damn, that would be one hell of a set of cods! Or was his kilt hoisted up to give a clear view of the codpiece doing its job? (The proper term is “sporran,” by the way, which is the little man-purse that goes with a kilt.)

Elsewhere, in the course of one page, Graham thinks about his hard-on, dick, penis, and . . . wait for it . . . PECKER! Which, by the way, “was hard as a hammer.” Good thing it was, because “he had some banging to do.” This vulgarity is out of character, so it jarred me out of the mild sexytimes that were going on.

That wasn’t the only awkward figure of speech. At another point, Graham says that he could have Cait “sizzling like garlic on a hot pan.” In my experience living in an apartment building, having the neighbors’ garlicky cooking odors intrude upon romantic moments? Yeah, no. And please don’t ask about the orchard and the peaches (and no, that doesn’t actually refer to Graham thinking about fruity breasts).

Finally, since the Scottish setting was one of the things that drew me to this book, it was particularly disappointing that there was no sense of place. The USS Enterprise could have beamed all the characters up and put them down in a little seaside town pretty much anywhere. One factor contributing to this is the author’s poor job researching Scottish customs and language. Er, do doctors actually “bugger the hell out of” their patients there? That sounds painful. Not to mention unprofessional.

In conclusion, I wish this book had lived up to its promising premise. I’ll just have to indulge in my fantasies of Tom Hiddleston in a kilt on my own. Not that that’s a challenge.