Welcome to my Promo/Review stop on the Virtual
Book Tour for WHEN A SCOT TIES THE KNOT, book 3 in the Castles Ever After
series by Tessa Dare. Already a huge fan of Tessa Dare’s incomparable ability
to conjure characters that we can’t help but fall in love with, I think she
outdid herself with Logan and Maddie. This might be her best ever…yes, I’ve
said that before, so imagine my surprise when she topped the last one. Stick around
for a taste of this wonderful book, as well as a tour wide giveaway!
***purchased a copy for my own personal reading
and am sharing my honest and unscripted review with you.
Blurb for
WHEN A SCOT TIES THE KNOT:
On the cusp of her first
London season, Miss Madeline Gracechurch was shy, pretty and talented with a
drawing pencil, but hopelessly awkward with gentlemen. She was certain to be a
dismal failure on the London marriage mart. So Maddie did what generations of
shy, awkward young ladies have done: she invented a sweetheart.
A Scottish sweetheart. One who was handsome and honorable and devoted to her,
but conveniently never around. Maddie poured her heart into writing the
imaginary Captain MacKenzie letter after letter…and by pretending to be
devastated when he was (not really) killed in battle, she managed to avoid the
pressures of London society entirely.
Until years later, when this kilted Highland lover of her imaginings shows up
in the flesh. The real Captain Logan MacKenzie arrives on her
doorstep—handsome as anything, but not entirely honorable. He’s wounded, jaded,
in possession of her letters…and ready to make good on every promise Maddie
never expected to keep.
My Review:
Since the blurb summarizes what happens in this must read historical romance already, I
will skip doing a brief recap. I call WHEN A SCOT TIES THE KNOT by Tessa Dare a
must read because if you love romance,
a wonderful, teary-eyed HEA ending, and all the fun, excitement, and teasing
sexual tension that a good historical romance can give you then you’ve got it in
this amazing story.
Tessa Dare introduces us to Maddie Gracechurch, an
adorable epitome of a wallflower who was so indisposed to attend her first
season that she invented an imaginary suitor. Imagine her surprise when he
appeared at her door a decade later—every single gorgeous kilted inch of him.
Logan is the hero who snatches your heart with charm, swagger, and a crushing
childhood making you want to wrap your arms around him and hold him tight into
the night, even while you wish to smack him upside the head during the day.
Maddie and Logan’s fellow characters are as equally
endearing, as lively, and worthy of falling in love with as they are. Grant
makes you wish you could heal his heartbreak even as he can’t remember it, and
Aunt Thea, with her traveling apothecary and own tragic love story, is such a
sweet, lovable creature that she even melts Logan’s closed off heart just a
bit.
I highly, HIGHLY, recommend reading WHEN A SCOT
TIES THE KNOT by Tessa Dare, not because it’s written by one of the best
historical romance writers of our time, but because this story is unique,
exciting, and most certainly romantic. It will tickle your funny bone from the
beginning with Maddie’s delightful letters, and continue to keep you chuckling
through her fumbling misadventures with Logan. WHEN A SCOT TIES THE KNOT is funny,
endearing, and so wonderfully written that it will keep you smiling, even
through tears, and leave you wishing it didn’t have to end but when it does, it’s
with one of the sweetest happily-ever-afters—ever!
Excerpt
from WHEN A SCOT TIES THE KNOT:
Prologue
September 21, 1808
Dear Captain Logan MacKenzie,
There is but one consolation in writing this absurd letter.
And that is that you, my dear delusion, do not exist to read it.
But I run ahead of myself. Introductions first.
I am Madeline Eloise Gracechurch. The greatest ninny to ever
draw breath in England. This will come as a shock, I fear, but you fell deeply
in love with me when we did not cross paths in Brighton. And now we are
engaged.
Maddie could not remember the first time she’d
held a drawing pencil. She only knew she could not recall a time she’d been
without one.
In fact, she usually carried two or three. She
kept them tucked in her apron pockets and speared in her upswept dark hair, and
sometimes—when she needed all her limbs for climbing a tree or vaulting a fence
rail—clenched in her teeth.
And she wore them down to nubs. She sketched
songbirds when she was supposed to be minding her lessons, and she sketched
church mice when she was meant to be at prayer. When she had time to ramble out
of doors, anything in Nature was fair game—from the shoots of clover between
her toes to any cloud that meandered overhead.
She loved to draw anything. Well, almost anything.
She hated drawing attention to herself.
And thus, at sixteen years old, she found
herself staring down her first London season with approximately as much joy as
one might anticipate a dose of purgative.
After many years as a widower, Papa had taken a
new wife. One a mere eight years older than Maddie herself. Anne was cheerful, elegant,
lively. Every- thing her new stepdaughter was not.
Oh, to be Cinderella in all her soot-smeared,
rag-clad misery. Maddie would have been thrilled to have a wicked stepmother
lock her in the tower while everyone else went to the ball. Instead, she was
stuck with a very different sort of stepmother— one eager to dress her in
silks, send her to dances, and thrust her into the arms of an unsuspecting
prince.
Figuratively, of course.
At best, Maddie was expected to fetch a third
son with aspirations to the Church, or perhaps an insolvent baronet.
At worst . . .
Maddie didn’t do well in crowds. More to the
point, she didn’t do anything in
crowds. In any large gathering—be it a market, a theater, a ballroom— she had a
tendency to freeze, almost literally. An arctic sense of terror took hold of
her, and the crush of bodies rendered her solid and stupid as a block of ice.
The mere thought of a London season made her
shudder.
And yet, she had no choice.
While Papa and Anne (she could not bring herself
to address a twenty-four-year-old as Mama) enjoyed their honeymoon, Maddie was
sent to a ladies’ rooming house in Brighton. The sea air and society were meant
to coax her out of her shell before her season commenced.
It didn’t quite work that way.
Instead, Maddie spent most of those weeks with shells. Collecting them on the
beach, sketching them in her notebook, and trying not to think about parties or
balls or gentlemen.
On the morning she returned, Anne greeted her
with a pointed question. “There now. Are you all ready to meet your special
someone?”
That was when Maddie panicked. And lied. On the
spur of the moment, she concocted an outrageous falsehood that would, for
better and worse, determine the rest of her life.
“I’ve met him already.”
The look of astonishment on her stepmother’s
face was immensely satisfying. But within seconds, Maddie realized how stupid
she’d been. She ought to have known that her little statement wouldn’t put paid
to the matter. Of course it only launched a hundred other questions.
When is he coming here?
Oh, er . . . He can’t.
He wanted to, but he had to leave the country at once.
Whatever for?
Because he’s in the
army. An officer.
What of his family? We at least should meet
them.
But you can’t. He’s from
too far away. All the way in Scotland. And also, they’re dead.
At least tell us his name.
MacKenzie. His name is
Logan MacKenzie.
Logan MacKenzie. Suddenly her not-real suitor
had a name. By the end of the afternoon, he had hair (brown), eyes (blue), a
voice (deep, with a Highland burr), a rank (captain), and a personality (firm,
but intelligent and kind).
And that evening, at her family’s urging, Maddie
sat down to write him a letter.
. . . Right this moment, they think I am writing a letter to
my secret kilted betrothed, and I am filling a page with nonsense instead, just
praying no one looks over my shoulder. Worst of all, I shall have no choice but
to post the thing when I’m done. It will end up in some military dead letter
office. I hope. Or it will be read and passed around whole regiments for
ridicule, which I would richly deserve.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now the clock is ticking, and when
it strikes doom I will have to confess. I will firstly be compelled to explain
that I lied about attracting a handsome Scottish officer while staying in
Brighton. Then, when I do, I shall have no further excuse to avoid the actual
rejection of countless English gentlemen come spring.
My dear imaginary Captain MacKenzie, you are not real and
never will be. I, however, am a true and eternal fool.
Here, have a drawing of a snail.
October 5, 1808
Dear not-really-a-Captain MacKenzie,
On second thought, perhaps I won’t have to explain it this
year. I might be able to stretch this for a whole season. I must admit, it’s
rather convenient. And my family looks at me in a whole new light. I am now a
woman who inspired at least one headlong tumble into everlasting love, and
really—isn’t one enough?
Because, you see, you are mad for me. Utterly consumed with
passion after just a few chance meetings and walks along the shore. You made me
a great many promises. I was reluctant to accept them, knowing how our nascent
love would be tested by distance and war. But you assured me that your heart is
true, and I . . .
And I have read too many novels, I think.
November 10, 1808
Dear Captain MacWhimsy,
Is there anything more mortifying than bearing witness to
one’s own father’s love affair? Ugh. We all knew he needed to remarry and
produce an heir. To take a young, fertile wife made the most sense. I just
didn’t expect him to enjoy it so much, or with so few nods to dignity. Curse
this endless war and its effect of hampering proper months-long honeymoons.
They disappear together every afternoon, and then I and the servants must all
pretend to not know what they are doing. I shudder.
I know I should be happy to see them both happy, and I am.
Rather. But until this heir-making project takes root, I think I shall be
writing you fewer letters and taking a great many walks.
About the
Author:
Tessa Dare is the New York Times bestselling,
award-winning author of more than a dozen historical romances. A librarian by
training and a book-lover at heart, Tessa lives in Southern California with her
husband, their two children, and a big brown dog.
Being a fan of the Spinster Cove series by Tessa
Dare, when I discovered we weren’t quite finished, I had to read this novella,
and I’m so very glad I did. I laughed, I sat on the edge of my seat, and I
sighed with the inevitable Happily Ever After that Tessa always does so well.
This is must read if you love this series, and I’ll let you in on some
wonderful news…Charlotte is finally going to get her HEA too. 
