Frankly, it wasn’t until about three years ago that I really started getting back into highlander historicals when I unexpectedly started in on another series containing a book I rank among the top five romances I’d save from a burning building: Jennifer Ashley’s “Highland Pleasures” series, featuring the Mackenzie clan. I only had so much time to read when I wasn’t studying. I moved away from these historicals some time around my second year of university, mostly because of my rising love and exploration of fantasy and science fiction. While I always was on the lookout for my all-time fav romance novel, A Gentle Feuding always had me forever seeking out similar novels, hoping for ones that talked about clans and arranged marriages and battles where the hero was injured and nursed back to health by the heroine who hadn’t really loved him until that very moment he lay dying. And once I was through with those, I joined the book club at the used bookstore to get the best deal on trade-ins. I read every romance novel that library had, starting with all the historicals. Lindsey’s covers at one point featured buff, stunning, gloriously naked men artfully covered by the heroine’s hair and dress.) Fortunately one of the ladies at the reference counter took pity on me and helped me pick out a few others that I might like (may all the gods bless her silvery white hair for eternity). My god the cover had practically a whole exposed breast on it! (I’m ignoring for a moment, of course, that all Ms. It talked about manhood and thrusting! And the cover. Once I found my copy, I clutched that book with me and walked into the local library trying very hard to pretend I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to be presenting one of those novels to a group of 85-year-old women (the library was run by volunteers).

It was really this book more than most that led me to seeking out romance novels. By today’s standards, of course, its rather tame, but it was always my little guilty pleasure and I kept the book for many years after finding a copy in the local used bookstore. As romances went in the 1980s, I thought of this one as rather risqué.

The very first highland romance I ever read was Johanna Lindsey’s A Gentle Feuding.

A gentle feuding