Customer Reviews

Love and Mayhem (Signet Eclipse)

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Love and Mayhem is Arsenic and Old Lace crossed with a medieval Scottish romance, and the result is lots of fun.

I do think, though, that the authors' note should have been at the front of the book, because I kept thinking "what?? this is Arsenic and Old Lace! What were they thinking??" Once I read the note though, I thought it was cool and fun.

Perceptions and expectations make all the difference.

This was such a good and romantic start. I started it in the middle of the night and i am soooo glad that i finished it during the day. The last part of the book sent chills up and down my spine.

In 1513, war weary Sir Iain Armstrong heads home to the Scottish side of the Borders to insure his family at Blackthorn and that of his neighbor at Fleet Tower remain safe following the devastating loss to the English at Flodden Field that cost the lives of his father and his future father-in-law. He stops at Fleet Tower to move the McCall family to his holding for their safety and informs his fiancée Lady Marion that she will be sent to the Covent of Newabbey on the Isle of Skye. She asks him to marry her now, but he cannot because she is only six years old.

Twelve years later he sends for Marion so they can marry. She avoids him so he comes to Newabbey to get her. He explains her people need her as her cousin Jack Fitzwilliam is causing trouble by claiming she is dead, he is the heir and stealing from the poor. Iain says two monarchs want them wedded to bring security to the Borders. Marion begins to see her fiancé is courageous and caring even towards the downtrodden unlike Jack who she remembers from childhood was a nasty villain.

This amusing Borders historical romance stars a delightful cast of eccentrics who freshen up what is typically a graveyard serious sub-genre with their antics. The fun begins when a despondent exhausted Iain has no time to mourn the death of his father or comrades or even reflect on the battle defeat as Marion sets the tone when she tells him to marry her. At their next meeting she dumps a bowl of flour on her head and her excuses for avoiding him are classic. Throw in her zany family along with a tense normalizing subplot involving Fitzwilliam leading to a jocular sixteenth century tale.

Harriet Klausner