Tess and the Highlander

Title: Tess and the Highlander
Author: May McGoldrick
Genre: Historical Romance
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Tess is alone. For eleven years, an elderly couple raised her after finding her at six, alone and frightened, amongst the rocks on the shoreline of the island they keep. Now, though, Tess' guardians have died, leaving Tess to tend to the island and, as per their orders, hide whenever someone new comes there. When she finds a handsome young Highlander washed up on the shores of her island, she knows she must help him or he will die.

As Tess and the handsome Highlander, Colin, spend time together waiting for a ship to come take him home, they form a friendship and discover that Tess is not so alone in the world as she thinks.

This was a cute story, and definitely better than the last Avon True Romance (for teens) I picked up. It's the type of thing I would have swooned over as a teenager, had I deigned to read romances at that age (I admit, I had a bit of book snobbery going on, though I secretly loved any romance I could find in books I read). As an adult, now, I read the book and think it's cute. I would have loved to have seen how Tess and Colin's relationship matures as they do, but that is beyond the scope of this book and the age range it is intended for. I will probably be searching out McGoldrick's adult romance novels, though, given the promise this one held.