The Viper: A Highland Guard Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

I am surprised to say that to me, this latest installment of the Highland Guard Series was just an average read. I was very excited to read The Viper because in the predecessor books, this character seemed very mysterious, arrogant, cynical and devilishly alluring. He did live up to these qualities and much more. I absolutely loved this character! He is everything above superior in such an elite warrior.

However, I did not like his matched heroine. She came across as too impulsive, flat boring and emotionally hysterical to me. You would think that after being held captive for about four years suspended in a cage above a castle she would learn to be more careful with not only the life of those around her, and especially our wonderfully acclaimed hero, but with hers as well; she makes too many careless mistakes and endangers so many lives on reckless impulses. Her story about wanting to reunite with her daughter, or get one glimpse of her daughter went on and on and her always being blackmailed with the chance to meet said daughter should she cooperate with her jailers, and ultimately the Comyn side of the rebellion was just too dragging and tediously repetitious. I found myself having to skim the pages with a great big sigh and "oh no, here we go again with our heroine going all out emotionally crazed and all over the place." With this being said, I truly felt that this couple was a complete mismatch.

Finally, I felt that this book lacked a bit of its own personality and uniqueness because our hero is caught and held captive towards the latter part of the book and pretty much mistreated in the same manner as the hero in the predecessor book, The Ranger. As much as I want to imagine these heroes being held captive in a dark cave/hole while completely stripped of their clothing and then escaping because their fellow Highland Guard members manage to disobey their king (Robert the Bruce) to get one of their own out of captivity is truly suspenseful, I really don't want the same captivity and rescue style repeating into another book. Surely Monica McCarty is much cleverer than this and why I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she must have been truly rushed by her editors into meeting a published deadline.

So, Monica McCarty will still remain being one of my favorite Highland Historical Romance authors and from having read the excerpt from the next book (I truly appreciate these as well as the author's historical research notes) in this series, am truly excited and anticipating its release (The Saint). However, I do hope that its hero will be beyond average and should he end up being captured by the enemy will not end up being stripped naked and thrown into a cave/hole like his other two colleagues; I rather he is stripped naked in a much more creative style and scene.

I must say that I have absolutely LOVED Monica McCarty's writing and her use of real historical events in her series. It gives her books authenticity and makes me feel as if I have traveled back into the Highlands. She is incredibly talented and I have looked forward to this book since I finished the last one in this series. However, I felt a little let down by this book.

First, the hero was great. I felt his character was believable and consistent and stayed true to himself throughout the story. Strong and silent, dependable and loyal. Who doesn't like a strong, silent bad boy? Although he was, at times, cruel and uncaring in his words, his story and his history gave the reader the ability to identify with him and understand that his lashing out was used to keep people out emotionally and could feel empathy for him. I felt he was the best part of the book. I loved him. The emotional strain between Lachlan and Bella when they at last reach the King, and Lachlan's return for his reward, felt real and pulled at my heart. You could feel the torture of the characters as if it were real. That section of the book made me want to keep reading.

Unfortunately, the heroine at turns made me want to leave her to the enemy, pitch her off her horse or throw her from the wall of the castle myself. Her complete lack of concern for others, including the man she claimed to care for and respect, made me unable to like or feel empathy for her no matter how she was treated. I felt she got only a fraction of what she deserved from the English for her horrible treatment of everyone in her life. Bella judges the hero by rumors before she ever even speaks with him; treats him as if he is dirt under her boot, then cries about his poor treatment of her. She wants him to continually risk his life, and that of all of his men, in impossible missions so she can have five minutes with her daughter. He agrees to go against the King to get a message to her daughter in the village after her cousins wedding because she swears that is all she needs to be happy. Then she risks everyone's safety because that isn't, after all, what she wants. Now that she is that close, she must SEE her daughter. Oh, then she must LET HER DAUGHTER KNOW SHE IS THERE and risks the life of all the men involved in helping her escape. She cares nothing for anyone around her and what they risk simply trying to help her. She comes across as stupid, selfish and shallow. Stupid, by allowing her jailers to use her daughter as a reward she never receives, while still falling for it time and again. Selfish by constantly asking Lachlan to risk his own life to help her and not being able to keep her word even one time when he risks everything for her. Shallow by judging him for what she sees as his faults without knowing anything about his story. In her mind, the fact that he will not do what she wants every minute shows that he has no feelings or loyalty to anyone. I seriously hated her. I failed to see why any man would want to spend the rest of his life with someone like her.

The story was a good one. The heroine could have made this story one of the best I have ever read, but I just could not stand the constant whining and blame and selfishness she spewed. For someone who did something so brave for her country, she should have been strong and smart and savvy. She was anything but. The emotional intensity between the hero and heroine were well written and charged with emotions. I am sad that I just could not stand the heroine. McCarty is so talented, but I have disliked several of the heroines in this series and I wish she would make one strong and smart instead of stubborn and immature.

This book was well written, and the historical details were great. Unfortunately, as others have already explained so well, the heroine, Bella, is just so stubborn and reckless in her goal to reunite with her daughter that she repeatedly endangers everyone, including her daughter, the hero, and the entire highland guard. The daughter is living in relative safety and comfort in England, while her mother flees across Scotland with Bruce and his guard. Considering that capture means torture and the possibility of betraying your comrades followed by a very public and gruesome punishment or execution, her actions and demands fell into the category of too-stupid-to-live. Her persistence in this behavior constitutes a serious fault in the plot of the story, and ruins what otherwise could have been a good book.