Review: Charming the Highlander by Janet Chapman

Grace Sutter's unmarried sister was returning to her boyfriend from Grace's house when she was in a terrible car accident. After the accident and giving birth prematurely to her tiny son, she succumbs to her injuries but not before extracting Grace's promise to return the baby to his father, the man Mary had fled before he knew she was pregnant. Grace puts her career as a rocket scientist in jeopardy to do just that despite her misgivings. And then the plane taking her back to the tiny and remote Maine village where she and her siblings grew up crashes on a mountainside. Grace and Baby survive because of the help of Greylen MacKeage.

Unbeknownst to Grace, or anyone else in the village, Greylen and his brothers are medieval Scottish warriors who have been tossed unceremoniously into the twenty-first century by a wizard eager to find and train his heir. Since Greylen is to father the babe with a modern woman, he has been brought foward in time although Greylen himself remains in ignorance of the reason. He feels an immediate connection to Grace and she to him, even before the crash. But the baby Grace claims is hers (what's a lie or two amongst destined lovers?) and with whom she is traveling will test their destined love. Baby is Mary Sutton's son by Greylen's sworn enemy Michael MacBain and she had initally fled Michael when he told her of the storm that transported him from the 1100's to present day. This fact is something that Greylen had never intended to share with anyone and that Grace thinks Michael is possibly insane because of his tale doesn't help matters. And while Greylen might admire Grace's spunk, intelligence, and drive, when she asks him to put aside his enmity to help out MacBain in return for her helping him, he is torn.

The tension between the main characters is pretty electric and although it is of the immediate, at first sight variety, the hardships that Grace and Greylen suffer together, bonding them closely, help to alleviate some of the skepticism that normally accompanies the love at first sight thing for me. I'm not a huge fan of time travel but it isn't overplayed here. I was disappointed in the dramatic, and somewhat nonsensical denouement as a result of Grace's highly charged job and the corporate secrets with which she and she alone seems to understand. That bit strained credulity even more than the time travel plot line. But overall, most romance readers who like a good Scottish warrior and fantasize about one living in the present day will appreciate this light and quick read.