Review: Never Seduce A Scot by Maya Banks

Title: Never Seduce A Scot

Author: Maya Banks

Publication: Ballantine Books

Release Date: September 25. 2012

Series: The Montgomerys and Armstrongs Bk 1
              (Read a steamy excerpt)

Eveline Armstrong is fiercely loved and protected by her powerful clan, but outsiders consider her “touched.” Beautiful, fey, with a level, intent gaze, she doesn’t speak. No one, not even her family, knows that she cannot hear. Content with her life of seclusion, Eveline has taught herself to read lips and allows the outside world to view her as daft. But when an arranged marriage into a rival clan makes Graeme Montgomery her husband, Eveline accepts her duty—unprepared for the delights to come. Graeme is a rugged warrior with a voice so deep and powerful that his new bride can hear it, and hands and kisses so tender and skilled that he stirs her deepest passions.

Graeme is intrigued by the mysterious Eveline, whose silent lips are ripe with temptation and whose bright, intelligent eyes can see into his soul. As intimacy deepens, he learns her secret. But when clan rivalries and dark deeds threaten the wife he has only begun to cherish, the Scottish warrior will move heaven and earth to save the woman who has awakened his heart to the beautiful song of a rare and magical love.

My Review

                I’m not really sure what to make of the latest by Maya Banks.  I don’t know what happened between writing her McCabe trilogy and the first in this new Scottish series; the McCabe’s were rough, tough, and fierce whereas the Armstrong’s and Montgomery’s don’t seem to have a clue of what’s doing around them.  There  was no real plot to Never Seduce A Scot at all.

                Ok, so Eveline Armstrong suffered a tragic fall from her horse three years ago, the result being hearing loss and an inability to speak.  She was on the verge of being forced to marry a brute of a man, but what man would want a daft woman as wife?  And so, Eveline strings out her misfortune into three years in which she can truly hear and speak and yet keeps it from her family, the people she loves the most.

                The king decries that a union should be had between two warring families, the Montgomery’s and the Armstrong’s and so it is decided that Eveline should marry Graeme Montgomery; the head of that clan.  Eveline is on board all of a sudden to marry Graeme as soon as she hears his voice although she cannot understand what he is saying since he is turned away from her.  All I kept envisioning when Eveline was in the any scene was Arial from The Little Mermaid, which kind of made me laugh.

                There comes a point in Eveline’s new household when the servants turn against her and all of a sudden she finds her voice to scream and shout that she wants them turned out of the house.  Not soon after she continues to speak as if those three years of silence had never been.  Yes, there is some stuttering at the beginning as she starts to talk after not talking for years but that is quickly gotten over.

                Oh, did I mention that everybody thought she couldn’t bear children just because she couldn’t talk?  Needless to say Graeme did not want to have relations with his new wife who he thought was daft although he thought she had a smoking body.  After it is learned that Eveline can talk and hear, Graeme consummates the marriage.  And that is where I left off.  I honestly don’t think I can finish the book, it is so unbelievably dull.

                Honestly, I would have never expected anything from the author who wrote Seduction of a Highland Lass.  Never in a million years.

                The only good selling point is that I got through the book in only a couple hours.  I really hate bad reviews but Never Seduce A Scot was a dismal bore for me.  I am hoping the next one in the series; Highlander Most Wanted will be so much better.