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After blowing through The Angel and the Highlander in an afternoon and really enjoying it, I immediately jumped into The Highlander's Forbidden Bride. This is book four and the final book in Donna Fletcher's Sinclare Brothers series. Before we get into the review, there is one thing I want to celebrate a little bit. This is my 100th post! 🎉🥳🎉 I'm really enjoying writing this blog and doing reviews for the books I read and having a space where I feel comfortable posting about readathons and other book club books. I'm really happy that I started this blog and finally pushed myself to start it. I hope you've enjoyed joining me in my reads throughout 2021 so far!
So wrap up the series, we finally find out what happened to Ronan and see him find his HEA. This book gutted me and made me cry so many times. My heart broke for Carissa and I just couldn't put it down. I may or may not have read until 1:30 in the morning. Carissa is the daughter of the barbarian that originally captured Ronan and Cavan. When Cavan killed him however, nobody could find Carissa. She has been hunted since then. Somehow the brothers find out she is at the sanctuary that Zia is from and all converge there. Ronan is finally reunited with his brothers and is also after Carissa himself for revenge. He believes that she has killed his love, a slave he named Hope while in captivity. What he doesn't realize is that Hope is actually Carissa.
Like I mentioned before, my heart broke for Carissa. She's had to put on a façade for pretty much her entire life to survive and had to hid her true compassionate and kind nature. Her father has drilled into her how useless love is and that hatred is the only emotion that lasts. She has fallen in love with Ronan and feels so connected to him. As he couldn't see and thinks that Carissa is the horrible person she pretended to be, he is constantly rude and telling her how he can't wait to kill her with his own hands. As Carissa in love with Ronan, she gets utterly destroyed by him constantly and her heart is continuously getting broken more and more. She continues to hide the hurt since she doesn't know how not to and just wants to run away and start fresh. She accepted when she "sold" Ronan to the mercenaries (really it was a way for him to escape and find his freedom) that she would never know his love again and that he could never love her as she was.
They end up snowed in together at a remote cabin and there's beautiful caretaking scenes going both ways between them. Of course Ronan starts to realize similarities between Hope and Carissa and jumps to the conclusion that it was all a ploy and just another way to torture and hurt him. We know though from Carissa's point of view that it wasn't the case and she went through hell her entire life and wasn't expecting to fall in love with him. We also learn that she's helped saved several slaves throughout her life and we even saw her help Honora in the first book.
When Carissa gets a really bad fever and Ronan has to really take care of her, he starts to feel the connection forming between them. He fights against it because she's the enemy and believes how she has portrayed herself. He starts to see her as vulnerable and really starts to see her soul and who she really is. I really loved the progression of the relationship between the two. I also loved that while Carissa was strong and independent, she still yearned for her person and someone to help carry her burdens. While it got a little more twisty at the end than I expected, I still adored this series and really enjoyed watching the Sinclare family grow and evolve as each brother found their HEA. Oh, and the wedding gift Ronan gets for Carissa had me tearing up in joy and sweetness. It was so perfect!
I know I've said this before, but if you enjoy highlanders or historical romance, you really need to try Donna Fletcher if you haven't. I like that her books are more sweeter and really focus on the romance aspect. I always feel like I'm getting a complete romance and feel pleased at where the characters are when she wraps up her books. I can really see and feel the HEA. She is one of my favorite historical romance authors and just romance author is general. I couldn't recommend her more and I can't wait to get into more of her backlist!
Have you read The Highlander's Forbidden Bride?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: The Highlander's Forbidden Bride, Donna Fletcher, 5-stars, 1 day, eBook, 384 pages, published in 2009
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