Bambi Unbridled: Review: An Oath Broken by Diana Cosby

Friday, September 4, 2015

Review: An Oath Broken by Diana Cosby

An Oath Broken
by Diana Cosby
Series: An Oath Trilogy #2
Pub. Date: June 23, 2015
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Pages: 231
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley

My Rating:

Sultry Scale:

An arranged marriage to a Scot? Unacceptable!

Lady Sarra Bellacote would sooner marry a dog than a countryman of the bloodthirsty brutes who killed her parents. And yet, despite—or perhaps because of—her valuable holdings, she is being dragged to Scotland to be wed against her will. Making matters worse, the knight hired to do the dragging is dark, wild, irresistible. And he, too, is disgustingly Scottish.

Giric Armstrong, Earl of Terrick, takes no pleasure in escorting a feisty English lass to her nuptial night. But the payment is good, and his tenants need to eat. Yet the trip will not be the simple matter he imagined. For Lady Sarra isn’t the only one determined to see her engagement fail. Men with darker motives want the wedding called off—even if they must kill the bride in the process.

Now, in close quarters with this beautiful Englishwoman, Terrick must fight his mounting desire, and somehow keep Sarra alive long enough to lose her forever to another man…

This installment of The Oath Trilogy follows Giric, the Earl of Terrick, who we met in An Oath Taken as the brother of the heroine, Elizabet. After being imprisoned in Sir Nicholas' dungeon and watching his father die, Giric's castle (Wolfhaven) has fallen into a sad state of disrepair. To help his people and rebuild his home, Giric poses as a knight and is hired to escort Lady Sarra Bellacote to her intended bridegroom. Things do not kick off well between the pair, and the trip from Ravencourt castle to Dunkirk castle promises to be very rocky.

I think I may be in a reading slump, because no matter how much I tried, I just could not get into this story. I love Scottish historical romance, so its rare that occurs with a book in this genre.

I also liked Giric quite a bit in An Oath Taken, so I thought for sure I would like his story. And I did. Like Giric, that is. I thought he was noble to have undertaken this assignment for a little gold to help his clan. He was honorable in that he chose not to lead the life of a reiver, which had been a way of life in his father's time. He was also the more reasonable and level-headed half of the romantic pair.

But Sarra - I did not like her one bit from the very beginning and it never really got better for me. I thought she was judgy and acted rashly. She was also selfish and inconsiderate. The ups and downs in the romance drove me absolutely batty, and almost caused me to stop reading a time or two.

I liked the journey, the travel through the snow that was wrought with peril. I have read similar story arcs in this genre and enjoyed them, so this leads me to believe that it was just the heroine or a reading slump that had me at odds with this book. I will finish out the trilogy once An Oath Sworn has been released as I am interested in Colyne's story.