#dangerous highlander

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Dangerous Highlander by Donna Grant (2009)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onJun 20, 2025

[rachelburiedinabook]

Dangerous Highlander (Dark Sword #1) by Donna Grant: 1/5 Stars

If I weren’t fully literate and also if I were elderly, I might have somewhat enjoyed this book.

I really hate writing one-star reviews. It makes me feel like I’m punching someone in the face or like maybe I should lay low for a little while. But Dangerous Highlander, you’ve got it coming. I am just…incredulous. Like, how? How does this have a four-star rating on Goodreads and why does it appear on ‘Best Paranormal Romance’ lists and how are there 6+ books in the series and why are people reading them?

The plot (and I use this term loosely) was weak (and that’s putting it mildly) at best. It was like blah blah the Druids used gods from hell to keep the Romans out of Scotland and then they had to imprison them in their bodies and pass them to their offspring. And then there’s this evil immortal Druid bitch, Deirdre, who wants to control them all and releases the gods and then the Highlanders with the gods in them are immortal. So basically, her goal is to capture them all and use them, for what—I don’t know. I have to assume world domination, but her goals are never made apparent. But really, what this book is about is the three god-possessed MacLeod brothers hiding in a haunted castle and how one of them has this out-of-control centuries old boner and ‘falls in love’ with the first girl to stumble upon the castle.

The characters were boring and underdeveloped. If they’d all been murdered in the end, I’d have bumped this up to three stars, maybe even four. The big scary gods were more like whiney, mopey emo teens and the main character, Cara (who, of course, was a virgin and was going to become a nun before she ‘fell in love’ with megaboner) is the typical oblivious, self-sacrificing female with an unnatural aptitude for fighting after just a couple of lessons. She’s also a Druid, and Deirdre wants to kill all of those too because they could learn how to imprison these gods that she wants for who even knows what master plan, but she doesn’t know that because her parents were murdered when she was younger. Oh, her parents were also evil Druids like Deirdre, so there’s a risk that Cara could ‘go to the dark side’. Deirdre wants her bad, more than the Highlanders that have evaded her for centuries. So naturally, a book of this caliber wouldn’t be complete without Cara running away to turn herself over so that megaboner and his brothers don’t have to fight for her. How cute.

And I mean, I’m no writer, but I am a reader…and the writing here was definitely sub-par. Needless to say, the less than mediocre writing did nothing to aid the plot and character development. Also, if you’re going to write a lame, smutty romance with an otherwise weak plot, can we NOT call dicks ‘rods’ and vaginas ‘sex’. Like, at least not throughout the entire book, you think?

This literally might be the worst book I’ve ever read, and I’m not much of one for hyperbole. Basically, if I’d purchased a print copy of this book, I’d have thrown it against the wall several times and probably caught it on fire after I was done reading it. But alas, it was an ebook, so I can’t do anything more dramatic than delete it, I guess.