Jan's Reviews > The Rose and the Thistle

Set in the early 1700s, mainly in the Scottish border areas, during the reign of George I of England and ending with the Jacobite uprising of 1715. According to the author's end note, it's partly based on/inspired by the lives of some of her ancestors.

Everard and Blythe's romance is a bit of a slow burn. They didn't actually meet face-to-face until 1/4 of the way through the book, which was a little disappointing to me. Their love story was quite nice, and there were some dramatic events that affected their lives and added some action to the storyline in the later part of the book. It was a little confusing though, as they had different faith backgrounds, and the politics of them and their family members was also a bit muddy. Sometimes I lost track of who was on whose side and why at a particular point in the story. Love and faith did overcome all in the end, however.

I was a bit disappointed in the simplistic and fairly unlikely trope of (view spoiler)[ falling pregnant after just one night of love. Hmm. Yes, it can happen, but really .... not often. I don't really like it when authors use this trope (hide spoiler)]. I also don't particularly like the trope of the 'plain' heroine. I'm not really sure what it means, and have some trouble picturing the heroine in my imagination. In reality, hardly anyone is beautiful, so I don't know why authors bother trying to pitch a character as 'plain-looking'. People are animated by their personalities, not by their looks.

Overall not a bad story. But sadly for me it dragged and was too slow-paced until near the end, by which point I wasn't as interested any more. Overall, I think the book was a bit too long, with some 'padding' that needed editing out or trimming. So not bad, but not my fav book by this author.