Reviewed by Emma Crowley
In desperate need of a fresh start after a recent heartbreak, Cat Hardwick leaves her life in the city behind and travels to the remote Scottish Highlands. Arriving at her godfather’s estate, she hopes returning to the beautiful place she remembers from childhood will help mend her broken heart.
But as she steps into the grand hall, the castle isn’t as she expects. With a sagging roof and buckets to catch the leaks, Cat soon realizes the estate is in trouble. Determined to save the place that gave her such happy memories, she offers her expertise as an event planner as a way to breathe new life into the estate. Surely there must be a way to save this magical place?
The only person opposed to her plans is her godfather’s son, Logan McCaskill. He is just how Cat remembers from childhood – grumpy and irritating, but maddeningly attractive with thick black hair and piercing dark brown eyes. Each time he rejects her ideas in his lilting Scottish accent, she feels her cheeks flush, caught between anger and desire.
Cat spends her days avoiding Logan. But when an unexpected storm forces them to seek shelter in an abandoned cottage on the estate, with nothing but a flickering fire and a flask of whiskey for company, it is a night that changes everything forever…
But then Logan starts acting distant, just as her old flame unexpectedly appears. Cat hoped this place could be her new home, but now she feels more lost than ever. Will Cat find the courage to face her past and embrace her future? Or is she destined to leave this magical place alone?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of Dreams of the Scottish Highlands to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Dreams of the Scottish Highlands by F.L Everett takes the reader to Scotland and focuses on a family who reside in a castle that needs a desperate injection of cash. But the ideas they have had to make this become a reality have sadly been unsuccessful or else not worthy of developing. In steps Cat who herself needs a change in her life having lost her job and now everything she held dear has more or less imploded thanks to an inappropriate passion for her boss that she can’t seem to shake. Cat has rightly screwed up her life and she doesn’t know how to come back from it. All her hopes, dreams, romantic plans and schemes now lie in tatters. Taking a train to the West Highlands she hopes the opportunity to rejuvenate the fortunes of Iolair Castle will give her the boost she needs in her own life. Alastair, the laird of the castle, is her mother’s godfather and Cat feels a connection to the castle as she was once on holidays there with her family many years ago. Although the impact of what happened at that time still lingers long in her mind and she wonders whether she is ready to see someone once again who created these lasting impressions.
Cat is very organised and driven and she has had lots of experience of events through her former job. She is competent and likes routine and order and is determined that shew ill find a way that could make money for the castle so the family don’t have to sell it. When she arrives she finds an eclectic cast of characters living and working there including the vast array of dogs who bring a lot of humour throughout the story. Alastair seems to have his head in the clouds when it comes to the finances and future of the castle where as his son Logan knows that something needs to be done but he is not happy that his ideas for his kitchen garden and a hydroelectric scheme have been dismissed. Cat settle herself into life at the castle and she slowly begins to become used to the ways and eccentricities of the people and the castle itself. It’s providing her with perfect opportunity to put some distance between the mess she has made of her life and deciding what her next steps should be. But still the events of the holiday she had with her family 15 years earlier have a forbearing on how she is acting in the present and she feels she can’t act on a certain feeling that is gathering in intensity with every day that she spends at the castle.
The cast of characters was so varied in this book and lots of them provided numerous humorous moments that balanced some of the more intense times that featured every now and again. Donald and his wife Ishbel look after the castle and grounds Agatha is the cook/housekeeper but she was portrayed as the mother figure to them all and she is the one who perhaps plays the most important role towards the end of the book. Rory, Alastair’s other son, does come back from New York and plays a crucial role in the climax of the plot, attempting to save the castle. But really it’s Logan who I found myself deeply interested in. From the get go he comes across as moody and stand offish and is resistant to any suggestions put forward by Cat. He prefers to spend his days tending to his kitchen garden and cooking in the evenings in the local pub. He is rude, dismissive, bad tempered, grumpy and difficult, arrogant, bull headed and fiercely resistant to change. But yet there is something abut him that is deeply attractive and through chapters told from Cat’s perspective on that family holiday we find out what happened all those years ago and how a spark could potentially be ignited.
I felt Cat didn’t do a huge amount to find ideas to resolve the issues surrounding the castle until Rory arrived. Then a spurt was put under people and different strands of the story started to come together and Cat got more involved as I felt she was at a loss as to what to do at certain points and she appeared a bit aimless in regarding solving the reason as to why she was actually at the castle in the first place. I loved the ideas that started to spring forth and the fact that there was a bit of angst and a dilemma to solve. When things go belly up it all added to the fun and drama towards the end. As for the epilogue, I loved how things were all wrapped up but at the same time I did have that feeling of wanting a little bit more or perhaps another book with the same setting with the addition of some new characters.
The book overall was a nice, easy, relaxed and gentle read. There was nothing too taxing about the plot and at times there was a slight air of predictability around it but still that didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of it. What I will say though is the chapters were far too short and therefore it led to quite a number of chapters in the book. The chapters in my opinion certainly needed to be longer because I felt that mini events arose in a chapter and were dealt with more or less by the end of said chapter before moving on to the next and it was just too much. At other points, I felt I was only getting into the chapter and then it was over and therefore not much development and exploration could occur. Longer chapters would have definitely been more welcome as I could have gotten to know the characters in much more depth and events could have been given greater attention as well. Saying all that if you want if you want an delightful, escapist and heart-warming read with some fun antics and romance and thrown in than this is the book for you.
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