Author:  Isabel Cooper

Genre:  Historical Fantasy Romance (this whole crossing genre thing is rather confusing)

Summary according to Amazon.com: He Guards a Ferocious Secret

In Victorian England, gossip is often as precious as gold. But the Highlanders are a more mysterious bunch. And if anyone found out that Stephen MacAlasdair really was, he’d be hunted down, murdered, his clan wiped out. As he’s called to London on business, he’ll have to be extra vigilant—especially between sunset and the appearance of the first evening star.

Mina just wanted to find out more about the arrogant man who showed up in her employer’s office. Some might say it was part of her job. She never thought the stranger would turn into a dragon right in front of her. Or that he’d then offer her an outrageous sum of money to serve as his personal secretary. Working together night and day to track a dangerous enemy, Mina comes to see a man in love is more powerful and determined than any dragon.

Pros:  Ok, I’ll admit it.  I’m a total sucker for dragon shifter books.  I have been ever since I first read “Dragon’s Bait” by Vivian Vande Velde so I get rather excited when I run across one that I haven’t read yet. 

Legend of the Highland Dragon has everything your usual romance does; a hero, a heroine, an adventure that they’ll have together, chemistry, banter and, of course, a bad guy that’s after Stephan’s secret.  What I especially enjoyed about this book is that the main female lead, Mina Seymour, is a plucky, free thinking, highly intelligent woman that can think quickly on her feet.  She demonstrates these qualities right off the bat during her first meeting with Stephan as a dragon, and he’s impressed with her ability to come up with plausible stories on the fly to explain away some of the more startling happenings to individuals that aren’t in on Stephen’s secret.  As they spend more time together hunting for the man that has been sending manes, beings that are a type of shadow demons, to attack him. 

Stephan starts out as an intense, snobby, strong willed individual, which is to be expected of a Lord, but this is soon tempered by his protectiveness of his home, his family, and the concern he shows when some of his actions have unexpected consequences.  In fact, it takes Mina pointing out some cold, hard facts to him that pulls him out of a potential downward spiral when a choice he makes causes the death of one of a pair of burglars that they had decided to let go after they got information from them rather than send them off with the cops.  One of the mysteries about him is that he is forced to change into his dragon form for two hours every evening, and it’s never directly said why that is except that during an archeological dig he touched an artifact and since then the change is involuntary and painful.  We are treated to at least one London flight as he hunts for someone in particular, which was nice.

I love the dynamic between Stephan and Mina.  It starts out antagonistic and builds to mutual respect, attraction and at the end, of course, love.  Stephan tries to be protective the more their attraction grows, and does his best to keep Mina out of danger, but he’s often defeated by her cold, hard logic about how a peer of the realm can’t go traversing about the East End and expect to gather the information that he needs.  And while Mina does become a bit of a Damsel in Distress at the end (it all has to be very dramatic, of course) she still thinks quickly on her feet without giving into complete panic.

Cons:  After all the good things there were a few things I was rather disappointed about.  There was no explanation about why Stephan is forced to change outside of a general “touched something he shouldn’t have”.  I would have liked to have seen that part explored a little more, or had Stephan talk about his own research that he has done to try and find out the reason for the forced physical changes, and why they’re painful now when they weren’t before. 

About midway through the book Mina starts to catalog the library, which was in major disarray, and it’s mentioned that she finds a few journals and diaries, but she only reads one which doesn’t really contain much useful information and she doesn’t touch any of the others because of how boring the reading was.  I can’t help but wonder if maybe a clue to Stephan’s forced changes might have been in one of those accounts.

This novel also could have benefited from a epilog, especially since there’s a strong suggestion that The Rescue resulted in a permanent physical change for our hero, but it’s never followed up on.  Stephan defeats the bad guy, Mina helps him out of the resulting trouble, he takes her in his arms, she mentally notes the physical change, they declare their love, boom, book ends and left me with my jaw hanging down going “What?  What?  Wait!!”  So that was frustrating.

Overall, frustration and unanswered questions (for me at least) aside, I really did enjoy this book and am greatly looking forward to the second one which will feature my favorite character, Stephan’s younger brother, Colin.  Can’t help it, he reminds me of myself, especially when he makes dry, sarcastic comments.  My favorite was when he told Stephan to ‘quit flogging” himself over not being able to pick up on a trap that had been laid.

Then again, I thought the trap was rather obvious, but I also had the benefit of being the reader and not directly involved in what was going on.  Now I have to sit and wait for the second book to actually be given a publication date.  Ugh, patience is not a strong point of mine.