First Time with a Highlander by Gwyn Cready is the second installment in her Sirens of the Scottish Borderlands series. A time travel story that starts with a dram of whiskey to create the perfect man and a little bit of imagination.
Serafina Fallon needs a man if she’s going to take back what’s been stolen from her. While Serafina has suffered unimaginable loss, her friends are there to help her. Sometimes all it takes is a little magic, but be careful who you say that too. It is after all the 1700’s and magic could be deadly.
Resourceful, strong and adventurous are just some of what make Serafina a fantastic heroine. Will she survive the storm that she dreams up? Will this man be trustworthy or will he betray her too?
Gerard Innes works in modern day advertising and has a way with words. Not to mention a habit of partying a bit too much. When a night of celebration at work lands him in the 1700’s he questions the prized bottle of whiskey he drank the night before. If only he could recall what happened and who he was with, it’s all a bit foggy.
Unfortunately this modern day hero must meander in a world where survival is a daily concern. No modern medicine to fix what’s wrong and women who are waiting to be taken seriously. Gerard must decide if what he needs is back in the future or with him in the past. Will he rush back to his old life or pray to stay in Scotland.
Love is powerful and can make people do unimaginable things. What will Gerard do when he realizes that his love could be reciprocated if he stays? Can he leave his life and family behind?
From the cover to the small details etched into the readers imagination, Gwyn infuses modern day charm into the 1700’s vividly. These golden nuggets will be devoured when you read the journey these characters embark while immersed in the past.
While this book can be read as a stand alone you will want to read the series! Trust me – what these ladies cook up is entertaining, sexy and charming. You will wish your modern day man donned a kilt and picked up a sword to save your reputation and good name. Just make sure he pours you a good glass of whiskey first!
I received this ARC for a fair and honest review.
ICYMI: My review of Just in Time for a Highlander
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Gwyn’s here to tell us a little bit more about the inspiration behind her time-travel romances:
I began to write with the intention of getting published in June, 1997 to honor my younger sister, who was a poet and photographer and who had died suddenly the month before. The sort of book I wanted to write was a book like the one a friend had given me a few months earlier—Outlander. At that time, I’d never read a romance before, and I COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN. Jamie is the best sort of hero—devoted, funny, brave, smart, and supportive of the heroine. I was so hopped up on the first three Outlander novels, it was pretty much all I could talk about in the spring of 1997—and it was one of the things I talked to my sister about since her college boyfriend had been named Jamie and like the heroine in Outlander, my sister’s name was Claire. It was the last conversations I ever had with her.
So there I am, in 1997, wanting to honor my sister with a book, and certain the book I want to write is a romance like Outlander. Time travel fit in nicely for me. Outlander is a time travel novel, of course, but I’d been a time travel fan before that. The Back to the Future movies are my holy grail of time travel. I loved Somewhere in Time, of course, as well as the Terminator movies, Time After Time, and Groundhog Day. Time travel lets you quickly throw your character into adversity and see if he/she sinks or swims. The question you want readers asking in romance novels is “How, with all these challenges, will the hero and heroine still end up together?” Time travel adds another layer to that tension, specifically, “How will they end up together when each is destined to be in his/her own time?” In my mind, one of the most heroic things a character can do is give up his own time in order to be with the person he/she loves, and that’s always a tender and gripping moment to write in my books.
Which brings us to First Time with a Highlander. Serafina and Gerard were such fun characters to chase through a novel. As with Just in Time for a Highlander, the first book in the Sirens of the Scottish Borderlands series, I wanted to shake things up a bit by having the hero be the person who travels to the past. Gerard is an ad man—and since I spent twenty years working in brand management at a big pharma company, I know what ad men are like. The women in this series hold positions of unusual power for women in the eighteenth century, and Serafina is no exception. She inherited a shipping concern from her father, but her blackguard of an ex-fiancé has run the business into the ground. He’s ruined her socially and financially, but Serafina is not one to take things lying down. She uses herbs she’s, ahem, “borrowed” from a famed spell-caster to summon a man to help her claim the cargo from the ship’s final voyage before her fiancé can get his hands on it. She only needs a man for one night and…well, you can imagine what that leads to in the hands of an inexperienced spell user. But Serafina is willing to pay the price—in fact, she’s quite willing once the smart, dashing Gerard appears.
Author Info:
Gwyn Cready is a writer of contemporary, Scottish, and time travel romance. She’s been called “the master of time travel romance” and is the winner of the RITA Award, the most prestigious award given in romance writing. She has been profiled in Real Simple and USA Today, among others. Before becoming a novelist, she spent 25 years in brand management. She has two grown children and lives with her husband on a hill overlooking the magical kingdom of Pittsburgh.
