Review: If You Dare by Kresley Cole

Title: If You Dare
Author: Kresley Cole
Genre: Historical Romance
Heat Index: 3 out of 5
Release Date: Aug. 2007
Word/Page Count: approx: 349 pages
Format: Purchased

High in the Pyrenees, a band of mercenaries led by Courtland MacCarrick wages war for General Reynaldo Pascal. When Court turns on the evil general, Pascal orders him killed but Court narrowly escapes and exacts revenge by kidnapping Pascal's exquisite Castilian fiancée.

Can she deny her passions?

Lady Annalía Tristán Llorente despises her towering, barbaric captor almost as much as she does Pascal. Her inexplicable attraction to the Highlander only fuels her fury. But nothing will stop her from returning to Pascal -- for if she doesn't wed him, she signs her brother's death warrant, as well as her own.

Can there be love between them?

From the moment Court discovers that Anna's prim façade masks a fiery, brave lass, his heart's ensnared, and he dares to defy the curse that has shadowed his life -- to walk with death or walk alone. But Pascal vows that he'll hunt the two, never stopping until he's destroyed them both.

I picked this one up at random. Literally, it was in a long TBR list of e-pubs I had, and I closed my eyes, arrow'ed through my reader, and put my finger down. This is what came up. That said, I'm glad it did!

If You Dare, the first in Ms. Cole's MacCarrick Brothers trilogy, isn't without its flaws. For one, if you're allergic to written brogues, be aware that there's a wee bit of that in this book. But it's not overblown or illegible, and I felt it contributed more than detracted. Hell, at one point, our heroine mocks our hero with it, which is awesome.

There are a few well-worn tropes in this one, including the hate-love relationship, barren-surprise-baby, and virgin-heroine, to name a few. But they're all treated really well and given a great deal of development within the characterizations.

I have read some complaints about the hero and heroine - Anna is perceived as an idiotic sort of shrew, and Court is taken to be nothing more than a brutish asshole. The thing is, these are traits that are understandable and appropriate to the characters' backgrounds. And those negative traits are handled and addressed by the characters as the story progresses. I felt that it made for a much better story, and I truly enjoyed all of those flaws bouncing off of each other and eventually growing into something better.

Anna and Court have this insane chemistry that just kind of sets the pages on fire. And the sex? Ho-ly smokin' hot. This was one of those rare times where it was erotic by nature of the characters' experiences and feelings, rather than 'erotica' or containing explicit terminology. The virginity part was even handled really, really well. But oh, my. The sex. And the chemistry. GUH. And the angst? As silly as the whole curse thing was, what it did to the characters' emotions was kind of gut-wrenching in places. And all of these elements were strong enough that I really didn't care that the battle at the end happened fairly easily.

Ultimately, I was delighted with this read. Much as I love the idea of Scottish heroes, books about them scare me. I never know when I'm going to pick up one that makes my eyes bleed for the attempted brogue. If You Dare restored my faith a little. Not quite perfect, due to some grammatical/sentence structure flaws, and the fact that the secondary couple was intriguing enough to leave me frustrated that there wasn't a bit more of them. Maybe Olivia and Aleix will get their own book? Who knows. I am looking forward to reading about the other MacCarick brothers, though!