Friday, September 25, 2015

Review: Moonstruck Madness by Laurie McBain

Moonstruck Madness 
by Laurie McBain
Series:  Dominick #1
Pub. Date:  Feb. 1977
Re-Release:  Feb. 1, 2011
Publisher:  Sourcebooks Casablanca
Pages:  371
Format:  eBook / Audiobook
Source:  Kindle Unlimited


My Rating:  
Sultry Scale:

She's one thing by day, something else altogether by night...
After escaping the slaughter of her clan at a young age, Scottish noblewoman Sabrina Verrick provides for her siblings by living a double life, until the night she encounters the Duke, and her secret and all she holds dear is threatened...
He's so disillusioned, he's completely vulnerable...
With his inheritance at stake, Lucien, Duke of Camareigh, sets a trap for the Scottish beauty with the piercing violet eyes, never imagining what will happen when the trap is sprung...
As their lives become irreversibly entangled, Lucien and Sabrina become each other's biggest threat, as well as their only salvation...

Moonstruck Madness begins on the battlefield at Culloden where our heroine, a young girl named Sabrina, has just seen her clan and grandfather cut down by Redcoats. Sabrina and her siblings are half-English, and they flee the Highlands to one of their deadbeat father's abandoned holdings in England.
O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide!
Without a means to support themselves, Sabrina takes to the road disguised as a highwayman calling herself Bonnie Charlie. I quite liked Sabrina through the first part of the book. She was a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and gluttonous to support her family and less fortunate on their land. She was brave and daring and witty.
Beware the fury of a patient man. -John Dryden
Sabrina meets her match when she holds up our hero, the scarred Duke of Camareigh, Lucien. Lucien is not a man to be trifled with and he vows revenge and means to have it. Given the origins of this relationship, you know its destined to be tumultuous. The ups and downs were abundant, and I think our couple may have hated each other more than they loved each other. It got to be a tad overmuch before the end of the story and I lost a lot of respect for Sabrina. Her obstinate behavior overpowered her admirable qualities.

That being said, the story had some lovely secondary characters. Sabrina's siblings were endearing, as was their doddering aunt with dementia. Charlie's partners-in-crime were two brothers, great hulking country brutes that were very good-natured. Then you had some good villainous characters in Sabrina's fortune-hunting father and the duke's cousins after his inheritance. So I liked all of those aspects of the story. There were some times where it felt like I was reading in fast forward, where the writing could have slowed down and provided more details.

This story was originally released in 1977, and I am a sucker for these old school romances. While I wouldn't put this one on par as one of my favorites, it was still nice to see a the plot hills and valleys to keep the story going. 

As a side note, I just love the old covers on these books, so let's take a look at the cover evolution.


View all my reviews

Dominick Series

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