Highland Fling [Hardcover]

Katie Fforde (Author)

Book Description

Series: Fforde, Katie | Publication Date: August 20, 2003

After a fight with her boyfriend, a business trip to Scotland is the perfect diversion for Jenny Porter, who works as a virtual assistant for a financial executive. Dispatched to assess a failing textile mill, Jenny instead finds herself determined to save it at any cost after befriending its charming employees. That cost might just be her sanity as she stretches her resources, patience, and compassion to the outer limits.

As she gets to know the colorful Dalmain clan, Jenny just can't say no when asked to help run a mobile food stand, save the family business, put an overbearing matriarch in her place, rekindle an old romance, or throw a dinner party for sixteen on short notice. Then there's the problem of being attracted to the dashing yet abrasive Ross Grant, who has a way of showing up just when things seem almost sane and manageable..

The majestic Scottish highlands, covered in purple heather and dotted with sheep and llamas, provide a dramatic backdrop while Jenny tries to pull everything together in time to save the mill and figure out her increasingly complicated personal life, in this delightful, romantic romp.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Jenny, the heroine in Fforde's latest offering, is a highly skilled and organized "virtual assistant" who, although she has never met the people she works for, manages whatever odd task is presented to her, including going to Scotland to assess the viability of a family-owned woolen mill and, if necessary, see to its dismantling. But her true skill is sorting out other people's lives, and as she becomes enamored of the place and the people, she finds herself developing innovative suggestions to keep the mill running. Having left behind a live-in boyfriend whose annoying ways become more apparent at a distance, she encounters a mystery man with animal magnetism who she finds hard to resist despite his tendency to bring out the shrew in her. In the process of doing her job, she also cooks, baby-sits, and solves the problems of the lovelorn, including herself. Although a bit more frenetic and zany than her previous efforts, Fforde's new book is stylishly entertaining and lighthearted. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Katie Fforde is the London Times-bestselling author of Artistic License, Second Thyme Around, Life Skills, Stately Pursuits, and Wild Designs. She lives in Gloucestershire, England, where she is at work on her next novel.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (August 20, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312317689
• ISBN-13: 978-0312317683
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #958,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Tartan Tale, October 12, 2003

By 

Wendy Kaplan (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Highland Fling (Hardcover)

When Katie Fforde is "on," nobody can reel you in like she can. And "Highland Fling" s the best she has written in years.

As always, the plot is pure fluff, and we know from page one that the lead character, a gritty Brit, will save the day. In this book, our heroine is particularly likeable: a thirtysomething, thoroughly modern Londoner who, after being dumped from her dot-com job, has become a "virtual assisant." In that role, she uses her accounting and business skills to analyze weak businesses for her Internet boss, whom she has never met in person. The job suits her, and apparently suits him too, as she is well paid for her efforts.

As the book opens, Jenny is leaving her impossibly boring and stodgy live-in boyfriend, Henry, for the North country--the Scottish Highlands, where she is being sent to investigate a failing family-owned woollen mill. Secretly glad to get out from under Henry's patronizing wing, Jenny rides up north to tackle what she thinks will be a quick and dirty assignment--prove that the books are hopeless, report back to her boss, and drive home before he closes the mill out from under the family and local employees.

But it doesn't qute work out that way. Jenny is drawn into the bosom, so to speak, of the Dalmain family--owners of the mill--whose dowager mother lives very much in the 19th century, whose "laird," the eldest son, is dating a barmaid, and whose daughter, a spinster in her domineering mother's eyes, is a psychological mess. Jenny gets drawn into the drama, and in no time, is up to her eyeballs in llamas and alpacas as she tries to save the mill.

Oh--there's also a tall, handsome, and impossibly rude stranger who brings out all the worst in Jenny...what is Ross Grant doing in Scotland, and why does he make her want to jump out of her skin? I can say no more.

As the Brits would say, "Well done, Katie!" This is great fun, and a great read. Pick it up and see for yourself.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Light & Warming Fun!, August 16, 2005

By 

butterfly (wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Highland Fling (Hardcover)

Genevieve ("Jenny for short") is a virtual assistant sent to the highlands to inspect the books and profits of a failing sweater company. She stays at Dalmain House where she gets to know its inhabitants a little more than she would have preferred. Lady Dalmain is an old shrew that treats her only daughter like a servant. Philip is the sweet, doting eldest son who does no wrong. Felicity is the agoraphobic who seethingly does everything her mother tells her and never stands up to herself. Iain is the rebel son who married under class and lives a "cottage love" life. Upon Jenny's arrival, things start to change for the better for everyone.

I loved Jenny - she was so caring, sweet and self-sacrificing for people who were basically strangers. Ross Grant was a treat and I loved how Jenny was so rude to him, totally out of character for her.

The book was very predictable, but oftentimes these light romance novels are. Other than that, I have no complaints! Highland Fling is funny, sweet, breezy, touching, at times very hot, and ultimately satisfying. What more do you want in a romance?

This was my first Katie Fforde novel, and based on it I will definitely read more from her.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tired, formulaic, sloppily written, August 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Highland Fling (Hardcover)

I used to enjoy some of Katie Fforde's earlier romantic novels, but now she seems to be rushing off a book a year simply to meet her publication deadlines. Highland Fling rehashes Fforde's overworked formula of an ordinary, rather scattered heroine who somehow manages to attract a gorgeous, highly desirable hero, all the while denying her own attraction to him and repelling him with rude, immature behavior at every turn. This book is so sloppily written and cliched, it feels like Ms. Fforde must have dashed it off in a couple of days.