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Mackenzie's Magic
Forced to marry Dominic Stanbridge, the most notorious rake in London, Jane vows to thwart his attempts at seduction. But the morning after their wedding, Dominic speaks in a strange Scottish accent, and claims to be Colin McKenzie, a Scottish earl that lived 300 years before. Never beliveing she could be bewitched, Jane now finds herself attracted to the man she swore to hate.
368 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2001
6 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Debra Dier
20 books45 followersRumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. The first time I saw a reader mention my possible demise in an online review, chills rippled over my skin. It is odd to read someone say she loves you and she thinks you must have died because nothing new has been published in years. To that reader and to anyone else who may have mourned my passing I say: I have been buried in all the wonderful joys and duties and responsibilities of motherhood.
Yes, other writers manage to keep pumping out books while dealing with children. I think I may have continued, except I had the loss of my mom hit right at the time I was finishing the last book on my contract. I just couldn't find the heart to pick up my quill. Instead, I plunged into volunteer work. Once I left that realm where the written word reigned, I never sought a way back into it. I was Alice who forgot about the looking glass.
My best friend gave me a magnet a couple of years ago that had “Stop me before I volunteer again!” emblazoned across the shiny surface beneath the face of a young woman who resembled me. She told me she was tired of waiting for another book. I realized my short hiatus from writing had turned into a twelve year sabbatical. I stepped back into my office, looked at my computer and decided she was right. I sat down and began writing the first book in a series of fantasy novels for older teens and adults.
While I was working on the new series, I obtained the rights to all of my previously published novels. The next day a New York publisher contacted me and asked to buy the rights to those novels. They wanted to publish them immediately. It was tempting, but instead of allowing those books to be published in their original form, I decided to take a peek at them and see if there was anything I might do differently today. I was always the type of writer who would have been revising in the bookstore if bookstores did not frown upon such tactics. The first book, Beyond Forever, took eight months to re-write. In reality, I kept the concept and a little of the original and wrote a new book. The result is A Twist of Fate which will be available late November 2013.
In the past year I have reconnected with an old love—writing. As I work my way through the old novels, I find my concepts and choices concerning characters and plot have altered over the years. I am currently working on revising all the old books. And yes, eventually, soon I hope, I will return to the new series. Before I get another magnet from Kim.
Debra Dier is the bestselling author of sixteen critically acclaimed romance novels and short stories. Her work has earned her a place in the Writer's Hall of Fame.
Deb was born and raised in Niagara Falls, New York. Although she always knew she wanted to do something creative in life, well-meaning family members talked her into doing something in a much more practical light. She received a BS in Information Systems Management and headed down a career path that included writing computer code and designing computer systems. It wasn't exactly what she had in mind when she thought of a purely creative career. For some mystifying reason, she was put on a fast track in that career and became a manager of other programmers and analysts in a large corporation at a young age. It was then she decided to try her hand at writing something other than computer systems. After her first novel, Surrender the Dream was published, she took the plunge into writing full time. She has never regretted that decision.
When her daughter was a toddler, Debra decided to take a short hiatus from writing to concentrate on all things motherhood. There wasn't a task she didn't take on, including making Halloween costumes, volunteering for room parent every year, and becoming a Girl Scout leader. By the way, her idea of camping is staying at a three star hotel. Not precisely the roughing it kind of girl. At the urging of her daughter, Deb has found herself sleeping on a mat in a ten
Yes, other writers manage to keep pumping out books while dealing with children. I think I may have continued, except I had the loss of my mom hit right at the time I was finishing the last book on my contract. I just couldn't find the heart to pick up my quill. Instead, I plunged into volunteer work. Once I left that realm where the written word reigned, I never sought a way back into it. I was Alice who forgot about the looking glass.
My best friend gave me a magnet a couple of years ago that had “Stop me before I volunteer again!” emblazoned across the shiny surface beneath the face of a young woman who resembled me. She told me she was tired of waiting for another book. I realized my short hiatus from writing had turned into a twelve year sabbatical. I stepped back into my office, looked at my computer and decided she was right. I sat down and began writing the first book in a series of fantasy novels for older teens and adults.
While I was working on the new series, I obtained the rights to all of my previously published novels. The next day a New York publisher contacted me and asked to buy the rights to those novels. They wanted to publish them immediately. It was tempting, but instead of allowing those books to be published in their original form, I decided to take a peek at them and see if there was anything I might do differently today. I was always the type of writer who would have been revising in the bookstore if bookstores did not frown upon such tactics. The first book, Beyond Forever, took eight months to re-write. In reality, I kept the concept and a little of the original and wrote a new book. The result is A Twist of Fate which will be available late November 2013.
In the past year I have reconnected with an old love—writing. As I work my way through the old novels, I find my concepts and choices concerning characters and plot have altered over the years. I am currently working on revising all the old books. And yes, eventually, soon I hope, I will return to the new series. Before I get another magnet from Kim.
Debra Dier is the bestselling author of sixteen critically acclaimed romance novels and short stories. Her work has earned her a place in the Writer's Hall of Fame.
Deb was born and raised in Niagara Falls, New York. Although she always knew she wanted to do something creative in life, well-meaning family members talked her into doing something in a much more practical light. She received a BS in Information Systems Management and headed down a career path that included writing computer code and designing computer systems. It wasn't exactly what she had in mind when she thought of a purely creative career. For some mystifying reason, she was put on a fast track in that career and became a manager of other programmers and analysts in a large corporation at a young age. It was then she decided to try her hand at writing something other than computer systems. After her first novel, Surrender the Dream was published, she took the plunge into writing full time. She has never regretted that decision.
When her daughter was a toddler, Debra decided to take a short hiatus from writing to concentrate on all things motherhood. There wasn't a task she didn't take on, including making Halloween costumes, volunteering for room parent every year, and becoming a Girl Scout leader. By the way, her idea of camping is staying at a three star hotel. Not precisely the roughing it kind of girl. At the urging of her daughter, Deb has found herself sleeping on a mat in a ten
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 20, 2024
So this book has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while now and in some ways I probably forgot it was even there; however, I’m glad I finally took it off the shelf. Reading this book was almost like finding a little hidden gem. It wasn’t too crazy and it wasn’t boring, it had just the right amount of entertainment, romance, and fantasy to make it a nice light read and I certainly enjoyed it. The plot of this story got me right from the beginning and left me wanting to see what would happen. So overall, very good story.
April 20, 2010
I loved this book
January 22, 2016
Every now and then (as in, highly infrequently) I read a book that was, somehow, the Wrong Book.
This book was the Wrong Book.
I don't mean that it was the wrong book to read, although it may certainly have been. I found it in a box of free books, and it was uncharacteristic of me to read a romance novel with a half naked man on the cover. (It's usually a scenery, or more cartoonish drawings of the characters.) But that incongruity aside, the problem with this book was unique: it began one way, luring the reader in, and then did an abrupt 360, giving me a Reader whiplash that I haven't experienced since Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler."
I gather this book is one in a series of books by the author, tied together by the theme of True Loves uniting across Time and Space. At least by the second chapter I had. The first chapter had me fully convinced that I was about to read a charming and adventurous novel about the deal the Hero and Heroine had struck - if, after six months the marriage was not (willingly) consummated, there would be an annulment. I was imagining a kind of comedy of manners (the book is set in the Victorian era) where the Hero is trying to trick the Heroine into believing he is reformed enough to love, while unconsciously falling truly in love with her, and the Heroine is likewise pulling everything she can out of her bag of tricks to convince the Hero she is not the wife for him while resisting his ploys. I was very curious to see how their characters changed and developed under these conditions to seal their Happily Ever After.
What I got instead was a bumbling Scotsman, whose mind had been hurled through Time and Space to be with his True Love. Therein ensued 80% of the novel, where very little (if any) actual plot or action of any kind happened, aside from showing the Scotsman how to use the loo. (This late Victorian house was surprisingly modern, I suppose to be palatable to modern readers.) The the dialogue between the Hero and Heroine could be summed up as follows:
Hero: "I have been transported through Time and Space against my will by you, you sexy witch!"
Heroine: "I am not a witch, and you are simply ill from a bump on your head, so even though I despise you it is my duty as your unwilling wife to nurse you through this!"
Hero: "You a re not my wife, you are a witch!"
In other words, extremely circular and tedious.
There was finally a little bit of plot at the end, which didn't entirely make sense. Both the Hero and Heroine were too stupid to live, because I knew who had killed the Hero's former lover by the second chapter, whereas they spent almost the entire book not even thinking about the attempt on the Hero's life that gained him that bump on the head. They got that plot thread tied up, but left a ton of subplots just hanging out for everyone to see, such as dealing with the noxious supporting characters. The Heroine is clearly emotionally abused by her mother, who has given her this martyr complex, and her younger sister is a total spoiled bitch who is supposed to get everything and whom the Heroine is supposed to sacrifice everything for. (The sister is responsible for the Heroine being in this unwanted marriage.) Does the Hero even flaunt his love of the Heroine for her family to see, showing them how much they had undervalued her? No. Not once. Nothing even comes near it. Apparently, practically everyone being a douchebag in this world is just ok.
On the bright side, the Hero and Heroine do have unconditional love on their side, because we are never given any real reason for their love. It's instantaneous, and has nothing really to do with what they do or say to each other, or the bit of plot they do go through together.
I could go on, but you get the idea. This book needs help, and the first step, in my humble opinion, is to drop the whole lovers through Time and Space nonsense. If the author wrote that, I would definitely give her a second chance.
This book was the Wrong Book.
I don't mean that it was the wrong book to read, although it may certainly have been. I found it in a box of free books, and it was uncharacteristic of me to read a romance novel with a half naked man on the cover. (It's usually a scenery, or more cartoonish drawings of the characters.) But that incongruity aside, the problem with this book was unique: it began one way, luring the reader in, and then did an abrupt 360, giving me a Reader whiplash that I haven't experienced since Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler."
I gather this book is one in a series of books by the author, tied together by the theme of True Loves uniting across Time and Space. At least by the second chapter I had. The first chapter had me fully convinced that I was about to read a charming and adventurous novel about the deal the Hero and Heroine had struck - if, after six months the marriage was not (willingly) consummated, there would be an annulment. I was imagining a kind of comedy of manners (the book is set in the Victorian era) where the Hero is trying to trick the Heroine into believing he is reformed enough to love, while unconsciously falling truly in love with her, and the Heroine is likewise pulling everything she can out of her bag of tricks to convince the Hero she is not the wife for him while resisting his ploys. I was very curious to see how their characters changed and developed under these conditions to seal their Happily Ever After.
What I got instead was a bumbling Scotsman, whose mind had been hurled through Time and Space to be with his True Love. Therein ensued 80% of the novel, where very little (if any) actual plot or action of any kind happened, aside from showing the Scotsman how to use the loo. (This late Victorian house was surprisingly modern, I suppose to be palatable to modern readers.) The the dialogue between the Hero and Heroine could be summed up as follows:
Hero: "I have been transported through Time and Space against my will by you, you sexy witch!"
Heroine: "I am not a witch, and you are simply ill from a bump on your head, so even though I despise you it is my duty as your unwilling wife to nurse you through this!"
Hero: "You a re not my wife, you are a witch!"
In other words, extremely circular and tedious.
There was finally a little bit of plot at the end, which didn't entirely make sense. Both the Hero and Heroine were too stupid to live, because I knew who had killed the Hero's former lover by the second chapter, whereas they spent almost the entire book not even thinking about the attempt on the Hero's life that gained him that bump on the head. They got that plot thread tied up, but left a ton of subplots just hanging out for everyone to see, such as dealing with the noxious supporting characters. The Heroine is clearly emotionally abused by her mother, who has given her this martyr complex, and her younger sister is a total spoiled bitch who is supposed to get everything and whom the Heroine is supposed to sacrifice everything for. (The sister is responsible for the Heroine being in this unwanted marriage.) Does the Hero even flaunt his love of the Heroine for her family to see, showing them how much they had undervalued her? No. Not once. Nothing even comes near it. Apparently, practically everyone being a douchebag in this world is just ok.
On the bright side, the Hero and Heroine do have unconditional love on their side, because we are never given any real reason for their love. It's instantaneous, and has nothing really to do with what they do or say to each other, or the bit of plot they do go through together.
I could go on, but you get the idea. This book needs help, and the first step, in my humble opinion, is to drop the whole lovers through Time and Space nonsense. If the author wrote that, I would definitely give her a second chance.
July 25, 2014
Jane Eveleigh was forced to marry Dominic Stanbridge, Marquess of Lancaster. On their wedding night, he vowed to seduce her within six months or give her the annulment she asked for. But the next morning Dominic is not himself. He is speaking with a Scottish accent and calling himself Colin MacKenzie, a Scottish Earl who lived more than 300 years ago. Jane believes a bump on the head has caused this illness. But that doesn't explain why she is suddenly attracted to him.
This story pulled me in from the first. Jane was forced to marry Lancaster against her will and is trying to make the best of it. Her mother and sister really don't seem to care about her situation. The story kept me guessing as to whether this was a real time-travel situation or if a concussion is causing Lancaster's delusions. My problem with his book was Jane and Colin kept having the same conversation over and over. Colin would blame her for being a witch and she would tell him it was his "illness". It felt like the conversation never changed. My rating: 3.5 Stars.
This story pulled me in from the first. Jane was forced to marry Lancaster against her will and is trying to make the best of it. Her mother and sister really don't seem to care about her situation. The story kept me guessing as to whether this was a real time-travel situation or if a concussion is causing Lancaster's delusions. My problem with his book was Jane and Colin kept having the same conversation over and over. Colin would blame her for being a witch and she would tell him it was his "illness". It felt like the conversation never changed. My rating: 3.5 Stars.
July 22, 2019
Loved reading the awesome and amazing romance story. After Jane wishes for true love, her husband, Dominic Stanbridge, wakes up not knowing where he is and claiming to be a Scottish Earl, Colin McKenzie. Read the highly recommended, wonderfully written, and a must read love story.
August 6, 2007
Fairy-magic, hot scottish accents and mixed time-periods (1500's and 1800's)... Great read!
August 3, 2025
Time travel soul exchange , written in 2001, 24 yrs ago. The 'present' in this case is the Regency period, and the past - 300 yrs prior. Read to the end, though admittedly skimmed a little here and there. It wasn't overly engaging. The lead characters had the same conversation over and over right up to 90 some percent of the book. I'm really Colin, from 300 yrs ago; No, you hit your head. TBH, that did become a bit annoying after the point where I would've preferred to see them on the same page, pardon the pun. 3.25 rounded down to 3.
December 25, 2021
Another masterpiece created by Debra Dier. I wish the Destiny Devices series never ended.
I'm about to translate this book for my granny, because she's Debra Dier's great fan. Can't wait to present her with the Russian copy.
I'm about to translate this book for my granny, because she's Debra Dier's great fan. Can't wait to present her with the Russian copy.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews