A Time to Surrender

by Margaret Carr

Stuart McDermott was hard and cynical. No one was going to marry his brother Robin for his inheritance, especially not a barmaid. But the blonde was not as dumb as he thought. Sarah Rossiter ran rings around him and turned his world upside-down. From the momenthe tried to buy her off war was declared between them. Who would surrender first?

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Live2Read · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Entertaining and fun! Though, I wish it was more romantic. Unfortunately, hero and heroine doesn’t have much scenes together. There wasn’t many opportunities for love and chemistry. Somewhat angsty. I mean, there is something going on between them but it wasn’t enough. The author didn’t delved deep on certain aspects and emotions to succeed such effect. I needed more, I needed to see them together and falling in love to really feel it, no? Despite that the book was still very enjoyable. I mostly like the turn-around of the step-mom. Who would have thought that she would eventually become a comrade-in-arms to the heroine in going against the hero? All in all, great supporting characters and the heroine is highly likable and smart! She outsmart the hero a couple times!




Briefly, the hero had hired a detective to investigate the heroine and have people following her around. She became aware and made a game out of it, successfully outrunning and ditching them all each time. The detective then called quits, saying she’s quite something and too unpredictable for his team to keep up. Hero was not very impressed, lol.

Amidst, the heroine was given the heads up (via the step-mom who we learned is now apologetic and sympathetic) that the hero plans to ‘bring/kidnapped’ her to Scotland and keep her in the family fortress, isolated and emptied, to teach her a lesson. Upon finding out the heroine first stalled the hero’s plan significantly before deciding to directly turn the table on him. She quit her job and told her landlady that if anyone came asking for her, tell them she has gone to Gretna Green. As the hero didn’t believe she has gone anywhere near it, at least, not if she was freely giving her location away. His disbelief surely bought her a few more weeks of peace, as she really had gone there. In fact, she is where he least expected her to be, at his family home in Scotland! Heroine intentionally left with the hero’s step brother and her sister for a holiday. Again, when he found out he was not impressed by her tact!

It lead him to successfully ‘kidnap’ her from the fortress and taking her to his cabin where they were together for three weeks. Doing what? Well, we were told she cleaned, cooked and took walks with the hero. That’s it? I greatly wanted the author to show us and not tell, but too bad the three weeks were loosely defined and not depicted how they could have fell more in love. It would have been perfect, it was almost perfect, ya know. Oh, well.