ROMANTIC LEADS BY JANINE TAYLOR
March 2000 

Dawn on a Distant Shore
By Sara Donati (Bantam - March 2000, $34.95HC) 
Sara Donati's first book Into the Wilderness was excellent_ worth five hearts. It was the beginning of what promised to be the best genre-busting series since Outlander.
I believe Donati is an author at the top of her game and, like Diana Gabaldon, has her fans waiting impatiently for her novels to be published. The wait for her second book is over and it was well worth it.
At the end of Into the Wilderness, the heroes _ Hawkeye Bonner, his son Nathaniel and his wife Elizabeth _ find themselves heirs to a Scottish earl. But the Bonners have no interest in leaving the home they've carved for themselves from the wilderness of New York State, circa 1794. 
In this instalment of the Wilderness series, Nathaniel leaves his family in their mountain home to retrieve his father from a Montreal jail, but Nathaniel fails and ends up behind bars himself.
Being a good romantic adventure heroine, Elizabeth packs up her newborn twins, stepdaughter, best friend and brother-in-law and sets off to rescue her husband from jail.
What the Bonners do not realize is how desperately their relations want the Bonners to return with them to Scotland. A jailbreak turns into a kidnapping that puts Nathaniel and Elizabeth's children's lives at risk and sends the clan on a high seas adventure.
At journey's end is a Scotland of old hatreds filled with peril for the uninitiated.
The problem with fabulous adventures and characters you care about is the writer never seems to write fast enough. I recommend you take your time reading this one. You'll want to savour it.


A Warrior's Kiss
By Margaret Moore (Harlequin Historical- March 2000, $5.99)
After 10 books about Medieval Welshmen you would think interest would peter out. But, Margaret Moore's Warrior's series just seems to go on and on and, fortunately, Moore has the stamina and talent to sustain the enthusiasm.
This time the taciturn trouble-making youngest DeLanyea brother has taken centre stage. Trystan feels he must compete with the talents of the older men in his family.
Trystan is determined to outdo them all by becoming more famous and successful. He plans to marry an influential Norman noblewoman and gain political influence in London and vows to never stay mired in his Welch homeland. Trystan promises never to marry that insufferably saucy alewife the local seer predicted would be his mate.
This is the classic love-hate relationship. The alewife is Mair of Craig Fawr and has loved Trystan since childhood although she understands and resents his competitive ambition. Mair has led a wild uninhibited life and on impulse has decided to take advantage of the passion that ignites between them to hold a part of Trystan forever. In other words she gets pregnant. 
Moore does a great job of taking these two unsympathetic lead characters and getting us to root for them despite ourselves.



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Copyright © 2000 Janine Taylor
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