Lake of Destiny

by Martina Boone

***** (5 out of 5)

Amazon | Goodreads

Disclaimer: All Amazon Links are affiliate links.  If you purchase any of these books through one of my links I will get a small commission! All the thoughts/opinions in this post are mine and in no way influenced by Amazon.

I received this book in my November Lit-Cube box.

I am not gonna lie, if I saw this in the store I probably would not have picked it up.  The cover is not super appealing.  But, based on the synopsis, it sounded like a good book, and I liked it.  This is a classic case of “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Though, in my defense, there are so many books to choose from that you have to start somewhere and 1st impressions always start with the cover and the title. (This is a discussion for another time, so I am going to leave it at that)

I love the Scottish Romance trope.  I don’t know why, it just makes a great setting for a love story.  Usually the Scottish Romance books I read are steamy romances.  This is not one of those.  I have seen a lot of posts lately about “Clean Romance” books, and this definitely falls into that category.

My favorite part of the book was actually not the romance.  It was the theme of the struggles involved in raising and protecting children.  Connal struggles with a balance of protecting his child without restraining her nature.  Anna struggles with her own upbringing and a mother that doesn’t understand her.  Their struggles collide as Anna tries to make Connal understand the mistakes he is making, while realizing maybe her mom had reasons for her own mistakes.  All the issues were very well written and realistic, and added a solid anchor to the story.

The love story was good too! It was fairly realistic, if not rushed, but that is common in books.  It seems people always fall in love instantly.  There is a little bit of magic involved.  The mythical Scottish “sighting” where you see your true love in a vision is used to explain the quick attraction.  The mythical aspect was minimal, so it definitely wan’t a fantasy book.  In the aspect of “just a little magic” this book reminded me of The Simplicity of Cider.  While the stories are completely different they are both clean romances with just a hint of magic.  They also both involve the dad already having a child.  The more that I think about it there are a LOT of similarities, but they are still two completely different stories.

I know that this book would technically be considered “Romance”, “Contemporary Romance”, or “Clean Romance” but if I were to give it a genre it would be “Hallmark Movie”  Its a feel good love story with a happy ending.  They could make it into a Hallmark movie and no one would think twice about it.  So I am giving it 5 starts, because I like that kind of thing, but I don’t recommend it if you aren’t the Hallmark Movie type.