Uncaged Review – Gather the Stars by Kimberly Cates

Gather the Stars
Kimberly Cates
Historical Highlands

An English Patriot… 
British general’s daughter, Rachel de Lacy, is betrothed to Sir Dunstan Wells, the hero of Culloden Moor, a man determined to crush the highlanders forever. When she is kidnapped at an officer’s ball by her fiancé’s nemesis—a fierce raider known as the Glen Lyon—she discovers the outlaw is none other than the branded coward Gavin Carstares, Earl of Glenlyon. 

A Rebel Lord… 
Haunted by the savagery of war, Gavin intends to use Rachel de Lacy as a bargaining chip to gain freedom and passage to France for the widows and orphans he’s rescued from Sir Dunstan’s vengeful sword. 

A Price too High…
As passion flames between captor and hostage, Rachel discovers a new meaning for the word courage, and Gavin is faced with an impossible choice. Can he return the woman he loves to his brutal enemy, even if that is the ransom he must pay to win his orphans their freedom? 

Uncaged Review: A first book in a series, and it starts out with a bang. The first couple chapters didn’t draw me in as quickly as some do, but that didn’t make all that much difference in the great scheme of things, because when it hooked me, it got me hook, line and sinker. To be honest, I didn’t like our heroine Rachel in the beginning. She was a spoiled and arrogant, and used a contest on who would be the best warrior to win her hand in marriage. The British are fighting the Scottish, and the one enemy that keeps eluding them is the mythical Glen Lyon. A Robin Hood of the Scots, trying to free the women and children from the war ravaged lands. Kidnapping Rachel, the general’s daughter is a bargaining tool that the Glen Lyon needs to get a boat of his people free.

The romance simmers slowly and the characters are well developed. The author does a great job of building this world so you can imagine the setting as you read along. As the characters develop, you see a huge turnabout in Rachel, when she finally discovers the truth and who she really is and what she really wants – not just as the general’s daughter. By the time I moved into the middle of this book, Rachel had moved into my good graces.

Gavin makes his own self-discoveries along the way, and maybe he wasn’t the coward everyone pegged him as. The devastation of the war is not glossed over and the secondary characters are as interesting as the main characters in this book, and I’ll be looking forward to reading their stories also.
Reviewed by Cyrene

5 Stars