His Bonnie Bride

Highland Brides, Book 1

De: Hannah Howell

Narrado por: Ashford MacNab

New York Times best-selling author Hannah Howell traverses the embattled border between England and Scotland, where two warring families prolong centuries of discord....

Storm Eldon was first caught up in the war between England and Scotland as a young girl, when she and her family were held hostage by their sworn enemies, the MacLagans. Years later, Storm finds herself trapped in the clutches of her Scottish adversaries once again. Now she must fight to preserve her loyalties, guard her virtue, and resist the charms of Tavis MacLagan, her handsome Highland captor....

Contains mature themes.

©1988, 2012 Hannah Howell (P)2021 Tantor

Strong female lead

It was a good story that kept my attention. I enjoyed it. It has interesting characters.

Vivid and well written old style Scots speech

I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy this one, many plot lines follow outlander quite closely but because the characters and descriptions are so well developed it feels new and so enjoyable. Also loved the insta-enemies to lovers variation

Very good

The female character was funny and strong. I loved their loved. I loved the large close family. The 6 pact in monks robes funny. It’s a good read.

Great story line.

This was well written, and the details were fantastic. The narrator made this story even better. Her ability to change her accents from Scots to Irish to English was impressive and a joy to listen to. The plot had plenty of twists, turns and angst, and at times I wanted to throttle Tavis for keeping his feelings to himself. This was a much better and far more believable book than Howell’s Unconquered.

Awesome and entertaining, over and over!

Great story! Wonderful narrator! I have read and listened to this one over and over again! I've also enjoyed Ian's story - waiting for Sholto's to be told.

She’s tiny, we get it.

Each sentence must punctuate how small she is, to the point of distraction. I’ve never heard the word slim said so many times. Hero spends the majority of the book not seeing her as anything more than a field to plow. Not for me.

The characters were so well defined

I really enjoyed this book as well as all of the others by this author the stories are always good fast-moving and very entertaining

Violent Sexual Content

Historical Context is good and well but I think that this book needed some kind of warning-not just in the comments. I know nothing of the author or much about the time period in the book save that modern ideas about sexuality and a woman’s participation/desire for sex do not well fit the mindset of those in this long ago time period.

However, violence is violence. The acceptability of it in a certain time period does not necessarily validate the use of it.

To pull back big picture and try to see how the author was juxtaposing the sacredness of some sexual encounters even without the blessing of the church (marriage), against the vile evil of those done while in a married state (though still not with the spouse) deserves attention, and especially given the time when the book was published, perhaps praise. I’m not here to discuss that aspect.

I definitely wished that there was warning about the violent depravity not just hinted at, but explicitly described. I was honestly sickened by some of what the author wrote. Not saying it was out of character for those characters, nor that the author was seeking to describe some reality. And it was not just one episode shall we say.

I knew I was reading a historical romance novel containing mature themes. But I did not know I was reading something with that level of malice. Those with any sort of sexual trauma should not read this book-or at least should def know what is coming at them.

Of course I read to the end. Think what you like, but I get pretty into books and I needed to have the main characters come through to the other side. This has so much good depth of characters and so many different types of redemption arcs. It’s a complete story that then leaves for both possible prequel or sequel though doesn’t depend on that.

It just needs to be stated that this has not just sexual content but violent abusive sexual content. There are several ways that ppl may want to apply depravity and sexual abuse. I will describe the two scenes that most horrified and disgusted me (and I quite understand that was the authors intent). So fair warning:
1) a woman being “sent” from one person to another for the express purpose of being used sexually without any consent asked and was almost assuredly a slave given the historical context. Then more than once we see in detail how this woman is being used sexually.
2) a flogging/beating, in order to receive consent for marriage of the person being beaten to the one beating her while she is naked and then tied to a bed. Directly following a pause in this beating, on the same bed where the beaten woman is tied up, the one preforming the beating and the one looking on have violent various forms of sex-all while the injured woman looks on the a haze of pain. They leave but intend to come back and resume beating the woman until she consents to be married to the person beating her. Later telling a trusted/safe person about this trauma, the beaten woman states that the one watching the beating, looked “as though she was being made love to” by the one preforming the beating. The beaten woman asks if that could be so and the trusted/safe person affirms that some find sexual pleasure in the pain and abuse of others.

That is a lot to put under the description of “mature themes” and I really do think that audible needs to put in a better warning. I’m not saying it’s wrong for the author to have wrote this. I’m not arguing that it’s not historically accurate. I’m not even giving an opinion on the “consent/not consent” argument I see in the other comments. My argument is about the lack of a real label about the violent sexual content that feels like it came slamming out of nowhere.

It's not a bad story.

Overall it's not bad. There's just a lot in it that's kind of unbelievable. There's so much that seems like the author was trying to go for the more true to life retelling of the time period. But then there's so much in it that isn't believable from that perspective. Oh well, I've been taken captive so might as well do away with any proprieties that have been bred into me from birth and sleep with this man. Sure I asked him once not to. Oh yeah his brother also tries to assault me and just because he's touching me I really like that. The way the men behave is like slobbering dogs the second they even think about a woman. It's just a lot to take at face value. Generally the story is fine. It just took significantly longer to finish with having to absorb all of this. Not to mention men slapping women, the way her step mother behaved, and just so much that isn't to be believed.

1988

I'm writing this review because I almost didn't read this book. I read all of the comments about a "rape" scene and they freaked me out. I thought I deleted it, but I guess I forgot and didn't realize it was the same book until I'd already started it a month later. Now, I'm really glad I did read it, and I would like to give other readers an opportunity to understand this book from another point of view.

This book was originally published in 1988. I absolutely loved the story. I understand how a love scene in a novel from almost 40 years ago can come across to many modern listeners in a negative way. However, if you pay attention to the historical setting and the context, it isn't so black and white.

While trying to understand the complexity of this issue, I started to wonder, how does the FMC feel about what happened? Later in the book, a number of times she is asked if she wanted it to happen, and she says yes, she did, she loves him, and she wanted him but didn't feel she had the self control to stop, and so she wanted him to be the strong one instead, etc. She says it was not rape. She also says it wasn't her choice and yet she does not regret what happened. Her character is always described as an extremely honest, practical, and self-aware woman. She is not traumatized. She also says she doesn't regret what happened to her. She doesn't hate him. She doesn't even blame him.

Does what happened primarily fit the most updated, modern day definition of rape? Yes, of course. However, a super modern day consent seeking scene just would not have fit this story. In many ways it was actually a very accurate historical depiction and the FMC is treated far better than she ever would have been in real life.

Think about it, and woman gets backhanded and knocked to the ground in the very first chapter of the book...and the man who does it is one of the heros of the story. Modern day viewpoint would be that he's a bad man, period. However, in the context of the story, the woman he hit was so determined to see the bloodlust on the battlefield, she almost gets all of the children killed, including his babies. This woman ends up being one if the major villans of the story, which makes readers more comfortable with her learning a serious lesson even though in real life hitting a woman like that (not to mention she was his wife) would be an absolute no. Also, the villains of the story are into BDSM and orgies and according to 1988 standards that makes them even worse people. The modern day view point would be not to judge others for their sexual proclivities as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult.

There are a number of times women are attacked physically in this book, but the writer always gives the reader an "out" with the context. She does the same thing with the sex scene in question. Does the way the scene is written fit better with the historical setting and leave a little wiggle room for the reader to accept it? Yes. Does that mean it's ok in real life? No.

What I'm trying to say is that, in books, context matters and so does the time the book was written, so take all of that into consideration before reading.

I was actually very impressed that the author took the time to add an additional scene much later in the book where another character does try to rape the FMC. She responds physically (and for 1988 that's pretty ahead of her time to write that so boldly). The FMC goes out of her way to tell him her body is not doing what she wants, she tells him this is not what she wants, that he will regret doing this, that she does not want him to touch her. The author goes quite far in showing how the FMC would behave when she is in that situation, and it is very different from the first scene. It's an out, this way the reader can see the difference between when she does want the man and when she doesn't.

I really loved the way she wrote about women's sexuality and needs compared to men's needs, the pain a woman feels when contemplating a man's possible infidelity and how they feel the same. I loved the conversation the FMC had with another character about all of that toward the end if the story. It was so beautifully written and well said. The language in this book is poetic, and it is just lovely to listen to. Most writers don't write like this anymore, and that is a shame.

Toward the beginning of the book there are many conversations between characters that address sexual assault as a mode of warfare. I thought that was a very serious subject to address in a romance novel and it was brave of the author to bring it up. Most romance novels written today are so focused on making the heros into paragons of modern virtue and modern idealism they end up spending too much time over-explaining and just sound ridiculous and out of place.

Honestly, the whole point of books like this is to create an imaginary world, a fantasy. Not everything in our fantasies is black and white either.