Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Catriona by Jeanette Baker

I received a review copy of this novel from Sourcebooks. This in no way affected my opinions.

Catriona is the story of Kate Sutherland, a young woman who is having 'visions' of a woman from five centuries earlier, a woman named Catriona. When Kate's mother dies, she travels to Scotland to spread her ashes, only to come face to face with the past – literally.

Catriona was a decent enough historical romance novel, but unfortunately, it never grabbed me. I felt that certain parts moved way too fast for me. So fast that the scene was over before I really grasped what happened. The modern romance between Kate and a man name Niall also moved wicked fast to the point where I wasn't buying it.

One thing happened at the beginning of the story that bugged me, and I never let it go through to the end. I won't give it away, but at the beginning of the story Kate received some rather life altering news, the kind of news that would send anyone's life into a tailspin. The way Kate received it was like she went to the grocery story and someone told her they were out of bagels!

The historical part of the story was filled with a lot of Scottish history, set around the time of the James IV of Scotland. And that's really all I got out of this novel – I learned some stuff about Scotland I didn't know before.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this or what, but I wish I enjoyed it more. Folks who like historic romances set in Scotland will most likely dig this.

2 comments:

Joanne said...

I felt her other novel, Legacy, was similar to this review -- the story had decent bones, but was not fleshed out properly. I'll probably pass on this one. Thanks for the honest review.

Julie at Outlandish Dreaming said...

I agree with Joanne, sounds a lot like Legacy, which I also felt went much too fast and didn't grab me. I think I'll pass on this one as well.