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Just Rose*
Toxic Triangle
I’m not quite sure what I was expecting with this book, but when I got wasn’t quite it. The book review site where I got it from stated it was a small-town romance and chick lit. I was curious to see which way it would lean more, as I find that chick lit is often more of a romance with an unhappy ending.
The book was slow to start, detailing Rose’s move to her aunt’s old cottage in the Highlands of Scotland. While she was from Edinborough originally, she had spent the last six years in London pursuing her career. She used to enjoy the visits to her aunt’s cottage when her family vacationed there, so her aunt left it to her. She soon meets the local laird in a near traffic accident. What follows is a strange romantic triangle, where she and the laird develop an intense attraction to each other, but he is bedeviled by his ex-girlfriend whom he believes is a danger to herself. In fact, he makes Rose secondary in his life to placating this ex-girlfriend. Things at the end of go completely psycho, which I was not expecting.
In the end, I didn’t really find this romantic much at all. I thought the hero was a bit spineless where the ex was concerned, and Rose should have given him his walking papers instead of sleeping with him right at the start! The book is overly long and at times repetitious. I do understand Rose’s confusion and hurt, but going over and over everything again and again was a bit much. I didn’t get the sense of rising action and progressive complications that would have made this interesting.
I didn’t appreciate either the multiple digs at Americans and “Yanks.” I would think the author would know that there are a lot more Americans who have the potential to buy her book then Scots, so why would she shoot her own foot and annoy a potentially vast audience? While Americans are only peripherally mentioned or briefly shown, it is never a good light. I find myself wondering if the author just has a bias against Americans or if it does reflect the Scottish small-town mentality.
