seriously romantic: the highland commander by amy jarecki

it's interesting to read about the characters in the highland commander, because it is not often that your heroes are on the wrong side of history. in the early eighteenth century england and scotland are still at odds. and the jacobites believe that the rightful heir to the throne of england is the roman catholic stuart exiled to france.

many a scotsman are jacobites, and aiden murray, the second son of the duke of atholl is one of them. he serves as a lieutenant, and then as a commander in the royal scottish navy. and while he's not in a position to publicize his political leanings, he does hold true to them. lady magdalen keith is the illegitimate daughter of the earl of keith who has been imprisoned for being a jacobite sympathizer and for treasonous actions against the queen.

meeting in london for the second time—their first meeting was an interlude at a masquerade where they both succumb to an undeniable attraction—aiden puts aside his plans to debauch himself during his leave and instead sets about helping maddie as best he can.

but the politics at court are tenuous and maddie is in some terrible danger. aiden has to put himself at incredible political risk in order to save her, and even then there is no certainty that either of them will make it out alive. what they endure, they endure because they are together, because they have the promise of being together to hold them up. believing in one another is the only thing they can trust, because god and country are against them.

aiden and maddie are each other's first loves. they are truly each other's one and onlys. in some ways their relative naïveté works, because the odds are so squarely stacked against them that only youth and relative unworldliness would let them believe that they could survive this. there's a lot of political thriller in this romance novel. i am not as familiar with the time period as i am with the regency or victorian era so i had to refresh my memory with some wikipedia deep dives. it's interesting, and i'm always up for shaking up my historical time periods ever so often, it's a nice switch from the nineteenth century that i'm used to.

**the highland commander will publish on june 27, 2017. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/grand central publishing (forever) in exchange for my honest review.