The Wattpad Times

7) The Historical Demise by Illogical

Note: The author’s name and story title has not been included to prevent us from getting attacked by angry mobs, as this story is quite popular.

Rating: 2/5

It’s been a while seen I’ve written a review. (Cracks knuckles and does weird stretch moves in preparation). It also has been quite a while since I’ve read a book so startlingly bad that would induce me to write a review. For the sake of public awareness of course I bring you a review that my writing partner has pushed and prodded me to write, until I did actually get up from the couch and write it.

So this book is a historically fiction and I can modestly or not so modestly claim that by the amount of historical books I’ve read so far, I can judge a good one pretty fast. This one however, was a sad example of a Scottish novel. Before I begin pointing out its flaws I will state some of its good aspects like the generous person I am. The writer was pretty much able to get the language, and tone of the Scottish Highlands right. She also managed to describe the lifestyle and setting of the Highlands accurately. For these two sole reasons I give her 2 points, because I personally believe that if you are brave enough to write a Historical than you should damn well get the basic language style correct!

Now onto the aspects of the book that basically killed it for me. Firstly was the character development or lack of thereof.  The main protagonist of the story is venturing into an unknown clan in disguise of a man, along with her older sister. They are doing so because the King has ordered them both to represent them to the Laird of that clan so that he can choose anyone of them as a bride and the other one will have to marry a ruthless barbarian lord by proxy. Why would the King being their own cousin drag them to marry a well known evil lord befuddles me. Now you might be confused as to why the female lead was dressed like a guy and risking herself being shackled to a barbarian by proxy. The answer is because she is a wimp! The female lead is one of those annoying girls who don’t realize how beautiful they are and listen to every word their manipulating older sister feeds them in their gullible little brains. Don’t we all hate those characters? The ones with no self respect whatsoever. As the story progresses the girl magically starts to defend herself against her sister and is ace in sword fighting while thrown in the middle of a battle. Whereas she couldn’t even pick up a sword just a few minutes before the battle had commenced. Seriously, she just looks at the charging warriors and knows what to do with the sword.

The hero of this story is a typical, rough and tough Scottish laird with a dark past. What made him unbearable was his lack of common sense. Eventually, the hero discovers our lead girl without her disguise as a guy. He is hooked to her beauty and wants to do God knows what to her so he requests an audience with her in the morning (basically a date). As the girl starts living double lives, one as a boy and other as the laird’s love interest almost everyone around her figures out her sham. Our hero however is unobservant enough not to connect the dots, I mean come on! The writer explains the hero’s reluctance to realize that the boy and his love interest are the same person is because he was too dazzled by his love for her. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry right now.

Finally the plot of the story line was what made it the whole package of a bad historical fiction novel. Initially the write leaves hints that there is a sabotage lurking in the shadows which has to deal with the girl’s parent’s death and her older sister. Obviously it was something that I as a reader was hooked to. However, as I kept on waiting for the mystery to unravel the writer bored me with the entire cliché idea of girl dressing up as a boy thing. When she finally explained the mystery (which should’ve been the main plot of the story) at the very end, it was a jumbled mess. The logic behind the whole forced marriage with the laird was so confusing and unrealistic that it made the story even more disappointing. It was sad that the writer had a lot of opportunity to make this story unique but passed those up to write a washed up novel instead.

Moreover, she included those occasional huge authors note at the end for no reason at all; just to give us dating updates about her life. I think it’s safe to say that most of us are not interested to know about her new boyfriend at all.

In conclusion, this book has seriously put me off from Scottish Historical novels for a while.