Somewhere the sun is shining – but not here.
https://karenranney.com/
I know this may come as a surprise to some of you, but I have finally arrived at the
conclusion that I’m turning into a curmudgeon. See the tears are falling from my eyes. Listen as my inner voice cries out for some good books!!! Puleese!!! Why am I flooding the world with my raindrops? Well, I’ll tell you. Karen Ranney has just presented me with a DNF. What makes this even worse is that Karen Ranney has been around foreveeeer. Although I do have to say, sometimes she hits the book out of the ballpark and sometimes she hits a foul. This one didn’t even get off home plate. (I’m not sure why I’m using sporting jargon, because I’m really not a big fan.) I tried, I really tried to finish this tale, but just couldn’t. It started out promising, and I thought it might be a fun read. I was rubbing my hands together with glee when a very superstitious maid started spouting dark omens. But it wasn’t long before I noticed the writing was tooooo disjointed for me to grab hold of. Here’s the plot. There is a pampered heiress from New York, Hortense Mercy Rutherford. She is very young. She has packed a suitcase full of money and is running away from home. She has crossed the big ocean, and landed in Scotland. It doesn’t seem to matter too much that this might be a tad bit upsetting to her parents. Why did she decide to run? There are two reasons, and one of them is a doozy. The first reason is that she doesn’t want to marry the man her parents have picked for her. Her no’s have been ignored. The second reason has to do with the money in the suitcase. This story takes place after the American Civil War. Mercy’s family are wealthy northerners, at least her father and mother are. Her grandmother, on the other hand, chose North Carolina to live in. Well, because her grandmother cannot accept money from a Yankee, she and her daughter have hightailed it back to her homeland of Scotland. And, this is why when this story opens Mercy and her maid are bumping along the Scottish Highlands with a suitcase of money. She wants to save her grandmother from starvation. Seems like a plan to me, not a good one, but a plan nonetheless. Then they see the dragon.
As it turns out, there isn’t any dragon in this story; that would be silly. This isn’t a fantasy after all. No, it’s really an airship. Enter our hero, Lennox. Lennox is an inventor. He putters around his crumbling estate because he just has to invent something, something new. Who cares if he doesn’t have any money? Who cares if he only has two servants? Who cares if they don’t have food to eat? At least he’s got his airship, which he stitched together with his two little hands. Speaking of stitches, there are a lot of them in this book. Either Mercy is stitching Lennox up, or he is stitching her. There are a number of accidents in this story. Evidently Lennox may not be very good at putting an airship together, because he’s lost control and is headed directly for the carriage. He crashes into it. The maid's arm gets broken, and Mercy has to have her head stitched up. By the way, Lennox has food. Thanks to his housekeeper, who is just like a mother to him, she is able to provide them with locally grown carrots.
Anyway, before Mercy and her maid are fully recovered from their injuries Lennox kicks them out of his house. Why? Well, evidently there is a family feud between his family and hers. It has to do with a dead brother eloping with one of Mercy’s relatives. So, the families don’t speak. In fact, one might say there are some devious things going on in them thar’ hills.
Let’s jump back to Mercy and that suitcase of money she’s lugging around with her. It seems that even when her grandmother is presented with money, she still will not accept any Yankee coin. Nah, she’d rather treat her granddaughter dreadfully and complain about everything. She also treats her daughter, Elizabeth, horribly. Oh yeah, there are a bunch of other relatives living at the estate. Mercy and her grandmother have a number of differing opinions.
Mercy wonders how her neighbor Lennox is doing, so she decides to sneak out to visit him.
On the way to his house she spots Lennox in his airship - again. He has decided, to stitch it back together and forgo the carrots. And, as before, Lennox just cannot seem to get the steering mechanism to work, because it is headed for the nearby loch. The airship crashes into the loch, Lennox becomes tangled up in the rigging, and Mercy jumps in to save him. He cuts himself and she stitches him up while observing his big thighs.
There is also a secondary romance between Lennox’s assistant and Mercy’s maid. Then we get interrupted in the romance department because Mercy’s rejected fiancé, Gregory, shows up. Another horrible person joins the troupe. He’s abusive, he’s a jerk and he will not take a no from Mercy. He also tries to murder Lennox, but I don’t think he gets punished.
There was so much jumping around from one plot to another. Except for the stitching of each other, there wasn’t any chemistry between Lennox and Mercy. There were a bunch of unpleasant people, including Mercy’s father, ex-fiancé, and grandmother. I skipped ahead to see if the story was worth continuing. Alas, I stumbled across the villain solution and could no longer continue with this story. This was a DNF for me.
Time/Place: 1860something Scotland
Sensuality: Didn't see any
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