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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good start...but ultimately disappointing, February 6, 2008
This review is from: The Night Before the Wedding (Mass Market Paperback)
A centuries old Scottish curse decrees that the maiden of the Farlan clan who bears a dagger-shaped birthmark must marry the chief of the MacBraedon clan by her eighteenth birthday...or she will succumb to madness. Famine and hardship will then be visited upon the clans until the curse is satisfied. Catherine (Farlan) Depford bears such a birthmark. Her Scottish mother ignored the curse and married a wealthy English merchant - Catherine's father - and thereafter she went mad and eventually leapt to her death when Catherine was a small child. Catherine has never been to Scotland and knows almost nothing about the curse. But since turning eighteen a week ago, she hears Scottish voices, dreams of being in Scotland, and has erotic dreams about a virile Scotsman whom she has never met. Catherine fears she is going mad like her mother. She wants to hurry and marry the kindly lord who is pursuing her, so that she will be cared for in her decline. She attends a party where she hopes to see him, but instead encounters Gabriel MacBraedon, a Scottish earl and chief of the MacBraedon clan. Astonishingly, he is the man from her dreams. He tells her - in no uncertain terms - that he has come for her, and that she will become his wife. But Catherine is not so sure... I liked this author's previous book, "Two Weeks with a Stranger," and was fully expecting to enjoy this one - it got off to a great start and the couple seemed to have genuine sparks between them. But the sparks petered out, the story slowed in the middle (too many tangents that went nowhere), and the heroine proved rather thickheaded. She stubbornly ignored or had no normal curiosity about some very obvious things pointing her towards Gabriel, such as the voices in her head that stopped whenever he was near and her dreams of him before they even met. And Catherine's attempt to trick the kind-hearted lord into marrying her before her madness took hold was extremely heartless. There were several things that detracted from the romance. There was an old flame of Gabriel's who was still living at his castle and still loved him...and for whom Gabriel still had feelings. Talk about awkward! Also Catherine, a virgin, allowed Gabriel sexual intimacies and then seemed indifferent to marrying him. This just did not ring true for me. Ms. Mullins is a good writer with a comfortable style...I simply had a lot of problems with the story.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
NOT AS GOOD AS I EXPECTED, February 5, 2008
This review is from: The Night Before the Wedding (Mass Market Paperback)
I have read most of Debra Mullins books. Both characters, in this book, did not have much spark throughout the entire story. The story revolved around an ancient curse that was boring and made both characters act juvenile and childish. The highland chief Gabriel's character was viewed, by me, as being dumb and unrealistic. The heiress Catherine's character was not much better. The book missed its mark with me because not much romance was involved and all these two did was argue the entire book. Both characters did nothing interesting with each other or for each other.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Average Scottish historical romance, May 26, 2008
This review is from: The Night Before the Wedding (Mass Market Paperback)
Catherine Depford is a wealthy heiress looking to marry but disturbed by some strange events. She's started hearing voices and dreaming of a Scottish man - all rather alarming when her mother went mad and eventually jumped to her death. When Catherine actually meets the man who has been in her dreams she discovers that he is courting her because she is apparently the key to mitigating a curse on his lands - where the highland chief must marry a woman from a specific family who bears a particular mark on her body. Catherine is identified as the 'Bride' of Gabriel MacBraedon's generation, only she's not instantly willing to leave England and travel to Scotland. Gabriel has to try to persuade Catherine that the curse is real whilst Catherine's father tries to arrange a marriage for her. As signs of Catherine's possible madness stack up, events get more serious. When Catherine finds herself in Scotland with MacBraedon she realises that she might not be his choice, if it weren't for the curse, and has to decide whether she can give herself to a marriage without love to save people she barely knows. This book was rather a disappointment. The overall plot was pretty thin with very little happening right up until the last 20-odd pages where events moved thick and fast. Neither Catherine nor Gabriel were well drawn characters with the overwhelming impression Catherine left being that of petulance and selfishness. Gabriel was a cipher of a Scottish warlord and the other characters were equally typical for this sort of book. I didn't find the scenes between Catherine and Gabriel romantic and some of the plot devices, such as her father's behaviour, seemed both unlikely and then magically convenient. This was a fairly mediocre book without anything special to recommend it, the plot device of the curse being one I have come across many times before. Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2008
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