Carole Mortimer, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-910597-94-1
Historical Romance, 2021

The back story of the hero in Carole Mortimer’s Wild is actually far more interesting than the plot itself.

It all began about ten years ago, when his mother decamped with the family butler. His father proceeded to let his lips touch every drop of wine he could get his paws on, along with every actress and harlot in town, before his liver finally succumbed to such hard partying. Then, five years ago, his sister Elena eloped with some bloke from Scotland that she had just met.

When Andrew Belgrade, the current Duke of Essex, can finally stop cringing and look up to examine the tattered remnants of the family dignity, he decides that he would be always prim, proper, and scandal-free in order to rebuild the good name of his family.

This story officially begins when he receives a letter from one Catriona McGregor. Oh dear, his sister, the one that hopped onto a magical haggis and never came back, died along with her husband in some boating accident. Oh, and Andrew is now the guardian of their kid The Much Honored Malcolm Hugh Fraser McGregor, the current Laird of Invergorden.

Our hero of course hops onto his carriage to get Boy Haggis back with him, so that he can raise the kid with all the pomp and propriety the brat deserves. Well, he has barely set foot in Scotland when he’s waylaid by two laddish highwaymen that clearly mistook him for someone else. Guess whom these two are.

There’d been some trouble of late with animals attacking and killing some of the newly released lambs, possibly a pack of wild dogs from the city in search of food. Douglas and his men had gone hunting for them after each attack, but so far hadn’t managed to find their lair.

Naturally, with tensions running high and armed men on the prowl looking for things to shoot, this is the perfect time to play dress-up as highwaymen and surprise people in the dark. I can feel my brain expanding already from the beautiful osmosis of our heroine’s intellect suffusing into mine. Wait, maybe it’s just a sign that I’m having a stroke…

Fortunately, the reason I am still alive is because this story is actually not bad at all.

The plot is pretty predictable. Andrew had been an admittedly horrible brother, continuously ignoring his sister’s letters until now, and he was surprised that her sister and her hubby had actually been living the good life in Scotland. Catriona resents him because she is close to his sister (she’s the sister-in-law of his sister), and she views his continuous snubbing of the poor dear as evidence that he is a heartless tosser. Naturally, they will fall in love and the Boy Haggis will find a new family.

Well, there are a few ways an author can liven up this overused premise. One way is to write beautifully, evocatively. The other way is to turn the whole thing into a circus with many distractions to entertain me.

“I should very much like to fuck you.”

Cat almost choked on the piece of tender venison she had just chewed and been about to swallow.

Oh my, what will the author’s previous Harlequin Historical editor would say about the use of such vulgarity?

“I have always preferred to deal with all things honestly, including physical desire,” Essex continued in the same cool tone he had seconds ago announced he wished to fuck her. “Rather than indulging in a ridiculous and time-wasting flirtation that would ultimately arrive at the same conclusion.” His gaze was icy. “Such honesty leaves no room for false expectations.”

Who said things like this?

Andrew Belgrade, apparently.

Yes, Carole Mortimer is patting my back and telling me, “I know exactly what you will say, so I’ll say it for you!”

Cat cleared her throat before speaking. “Next you will be flattering me even further by telling me this desire you feel for me goes completely against your nature and wishes.”

Excuse me, that’s rude. Leave me something for the review!

Cat continued to stare at him. Indeed, there was no way she could do anything else at the moment. “And does this…this honest approach to the subject succeed in seducing many ladies into your bed?”

His eyes darkened. “I have not, for many years, wished to seduce any other ladies into my bed. The desire I feel for you dictates I have no choice in the matter. Which is why I have stated my desires openly.”

I… I… okay, I chuckled. Damn.

Cat ignored his comment about not wishing to seduce any other ladies into his bed, although she believed she would like to come back to the subject again later.

Possibly once she was alone in her bedchamber.

Damn.

For now, Cat gazed at him incredulously. “What on earth gives you the impression that honesty will succeed in seducing me?”

His gaze remained on her unblinkingly. “The manner in which your nipples have hardened and your delicious female scent has deepened since I mentioned the subject tells me that you feel that same physical attraction toward me,” he remorselessly said. “That being the case, I see no reason why, for the duration of my stay in Scotland, the two of us cannot satisfy each other’s physical desires once Malcolm has gone to bed in the evenings.”

Is such exchange something folks of that time will say to one another? I don’t know. However, I am charmed by such… honesty, for the want of a better word, when it comes to the hero not doing that tedious song and dance that every other hero and heroine of such stories get into. There is no need for artificial simpering, no heroine acting like she had never known what desire until until the hero’s appearance reverses her frontal lobotomy, none of that tedious nonsense.

Instead, I get a hilarious story of a very controlled fellow, who has not taken anyone to bed in the last ten years aside from Miss Lefty Handy, turning into possessive, horny-addled guy that tries to be an alpha male but somehow falling short of the perfect score. The heroine, who isn’t a simpering virgin, turns out to be far less idiotic than her introductory scene had been, and I like how she can see through the hero’s clumsy efforts to get into her bloomers and play games with him on an equal footing.

I even like Boy Haggis, which really surprises me because I normally find myself detesting most brats in romance stories.

There isn’t much of a plot here, just people behaving in daft ways that make me laugh, but that’s a great thing nonetheless as I’ve had a blast reading it.

Sure, I recognize that perhaps a big part of my enjoyment of Wild is because I’m bored and jaded by the formula that has been applied way too often (to say the least) in the genre, and I find the author’s deliberate middle finger to all concepts of formula-following here both refreshing and entertaining.

Some readers will no doubt be aghast at the tomfoolery here, but me, I’m so happy that I read this thing. Look at me, I’m smiling!

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