The Highlander’s Forbidden Mistress by Anna Campbell

Tracy’s rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Series: The Lairds Most Likely, #7

Release Date: June 30, 2020

Widow Selina Martin attends a house party with her betrothed, Cecil Canley-Smythe just weeks before they due to marry. Selina doesn’t love Cecil any more than she loved her late husband, but she does love her son Gerald and will willingly sacrifice her own happiness to ensure his future. She has finally resigned herself to a passionless, loveless marriage when a chance meeting changes everything.

A well-known rake, Brock Drummond, the Earl of Bruard, noticed Selina from the moment he laid eyes on her. He knows that she has noticed him too and makes sure they meet. She has just concluded a meeting with Cecil in the library and has taken a moment for herself before heading up to bed, when Brock makes himself known. They talk and she is surprisingly candid about her relationship with Cecil and why she must marry him. Brock offers her a week of pleasure; no strings attached and is surprised and excited when she agrees. And so, begins an affair that will rock them to their core and may break their hearts and shatter their perfectly constructed plan when it ends!

This was a very well written book, with likable characters that were easy to sympathize with, some very HOT love scenes, a true hero moment at the end and a nice HEA complete with an epilogue. So why not 5 stars? Sigh – she was betrothed to another man and cheated on him with Brock – I just can’t like that – if she wasn’t actually betrothed, if she was just being courted with the expectation of marriage – I might have been less upset, but I felt like she made a commitment to Cecil and she went behind his back and had an affair, with the intention of keeping it from him and marrying him. That is just not something I can nonchalantly overlook. This is the seventh book in the series and can easily be read as a standalone title. Despite my disappointment in the heroine’s cheating, I know this doesn’t bother everyone and if you fall in that category, I would happily recommend this book.