Ian MacGregor is the hottest singer in the world of Celtic music. Backed by a rock band, he enthralls fans across the U.K. and is ready to embark upon an American tour. The problem is, Ian’s from 17th-century Scotland, and he was transported into the present a mere year earlier (at the end of Mallory’s previous book, Highland Rogue).  Just how he’s managed to become an overnight sensation in the Celtic-rock world in less than twelve months is brushed aside, and this didn’t sit well, but hey, it’s fiction.

Ellie Graham is Ian’s manager. Her beloved sisters, Maggie and Allie, are all she has left of her family after their parents’ death in an accident years before. Ellie retreated into a shell, hid behind a Goth look, and turned off her emotions so she wouldn’t be hurt again. She’s desperately in love with Ian, and he’s shown decided interest in her, but she won’t let him near her, no sir.  Better to turn a cold shoulder than risk ever losing someone else she cares about.

Okay, is this anyone I want to spend time with? In a word: no. She doesn’t need a romance, she needs serious therapy, or at least a long bout of introspection. Ellie has two adoring sisters, she’s in her mid-twenties, and it’s been years since her parents died, so this is nothing more than a contrived pity party designed to keep the leads apart. 

Then Ellie, Ian, and a scientist named Davey end up transported back to Scotland, circa 1734, and Ian has to work to keep them safe and find a way to return them to the twenty-first century.  Ian is half in love with Ellie to begin with. He’ll have to face some old family ghosts and work through a number of conflicts that he left behind in order to keep them all alive.

I liked Ian. He was compassionate and intriguing, but his interest in Ellie seemed misplaced.  The only thing that seemed to draw him to her was her avowed disinterest in him. In a twist, Ian returns to Scotland 23 years later than he left it, so his family is all older, but he is unchanged. He quickly uses this to his advantage, demonstrating quick thinking and smarts. Mallory does a great job of showing Ian as a man with his feet in two different centuries, and he uses his knowledge to his advantage.

Tess is, in a word, annoying. She’s a giant bag of “pity me” when the story opens, then she morphs into rather idiotic behavior, refusing to believe her eyes even after being kidnapped by a group of Highlanders on horseback wearing kilts and carrying very old-fashioned weaponry.  Instead, she spends tiresome pages asking Ian where her sister’s cottage is and throwing a fit about sleeping in a cave. Eventually she shuts up and starts to think, and the plot improves from there, but if I hadn’t been reading this for a review, the book would have been tossed aside by page 70.

Ian is stunned to find he has a half-sister named Katie, and the author sets up a secondary romance between Davey and Katie. It’s sweet, and Katie is no pushover. She’d have made a fine heroine for a full-length book. Ian’s father is deathly ill, which creates Ian’s internal conflict: should he stay in old Scotland and fulfill his duty as the next lead of the clan, or return to 2009?  Meanwhile, he works to break down Ellie’s resistance.

Romances where the hero is in love with the heroine and works to woo her are usually a great deal of fun, and Mallory does a fine job with Ian’s courtship of Ellie. Eventually, she becomes a worthy heroine for him. Readers are going to need some perseverance to get to that point, though. I ended up enjoying the second half of Highland Rebel very much. I have a feeling Ellie’s twin sister, Allie, may be next in line, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Ian’s brother Angus pop up in a story of his own.

Highland Rebel gets a cautious recommendation, with a nod to the author for putting a slightly different spin on the usual time-travel format. I’ll be watching for Allie’s story. 

--Cathy Sova