Corrine L. (celromance) reviewed on 1/10/2008 + 3 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 7

Shadow Music, Julie Garwood's long awaited next historical set in the Highlands, centers around Princess Gabrielle of St. Biel and Laird Colm MacHugh, two very exaggerated versions of the cliched characters of nearly every Garwood historical. Gabrielle is beautiful, talented in both female and male arts, mischievous, and constantly fretting. Colm is fierce, feared, giant in size, and fiercely protective. Seems okay on paper, but this time, everything fell flat. We're never given examples that showcase each protagonists good and bad flaws, we're just told what they are. It honestly seems as though Ms. Garwood profiled the villains (who are numerous) more than she did the two main characters.

As mentioned in several other reviews, it is almost half-way through the book that Colm and Gabrielle even meet, and this too is missing the little extra spark that Ransom, The Secret, The Bride, etc. had. There's no chemistry and little interaction. Gabrielle is on her way to marry another laird who winds up murdered. When she is ruined by the lies of one of the villains, Brodick Buchanan (her cousin by marriage) persuades his ally Laird MacHugh to marry the girl. Gabrielle, exiled from England, goes to the Highlands with no intention of marrying Colm, but is quickly brought around to his point of view, though the marriage doesn't happen til quite later in the book.

All in all, this novel was mostly an awkward revisit to a place and time that most of us fell in love with, and JG would almost have done better to cut out the central story and written instead about the Buchanans & miscellany.

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