| Title: | One Night with the Laird | |
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| Author: | Nicola Cornick | |
| Publisher | Harlequin | |
| Publication Date: | October 29, 2013 | |
| Publisher's Description | Can true love be born from scandal? She is young and beautiful and fashionable, Edinburgh's most flirtatious hostess. But within the merry widow beats a grieving heart. Lady Mairi mourns the husband she lost two years before—and no matter how accomplished a lover Jack Rutherford may be, their wanton night together was an encounter of the body only, and Lady Mairi would prefer to forget it. But when Mairi is threatened by a blackmailer, Jack is the only man who can protect her. As they work together to uncover where the danger lies, their passion reignites. Little by little, the masks they wear burn away, and their most private secrets come to light… |
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| My rating: | **** | |
Although the title 
of this book is completely misleading (Jack is NOT a laird), I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
The book grabbed my attention from the beginning. Mairi’s desperate self-loathing was interesting to me, because that type of emotion seems to be the exclusive province of men in romance novels. In fact, Jack’s early and initially unrequited desire for an emotional attachment to Mairi seemed to be what one would normally see from a female character. I loved how these personality traits were just presented, without Ms. Cornick feeling the need to justify or excuse who Jack and Mairi were.
The entire trajectory of their relationship was unexpected, and I loved how they were both a bit prickly and shy of each other in the oddest of ways. Watching Jack come to terms with his love for Mairi was a treat, and witnessing her journey toward reconciling her past and moving forward was similarly entertaining. I know that I’ve read other of Ms. Cornick’s books in the past, but I can’t remember having enjoyed them this much. I’m going to go through her backlist and see if I like her other novels as much as I did One Night with the Laird.
I’m a big fan of books where falling in love is not the be-all and end-all of the characters’ lives. Mairi in particular had some very serious obstacles to overcome in her own life (emotional and literal) before she could truly accept Jack. The Scottish backdrop figures into this story in only a minor way; this historical novel could easily have been set in England without Ms. Cornick having to rework much of the story. I highly recommend this book to fans of historical romances, especially those with a soft spot for characters who must heal themselves before they can embrace love.
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