Review: Under His Kilt by Melissa Blue

Under His Kilt by Melissa Blue (2013)
Genre: Romance (duh), Multiracial
My Rating:★★☆☆☆
Steam Level:
Format: eBook

Goodreads

Jocelyn Pearson is determined to spend her last month as a twenty-something doing everything she’s too busy or scared to try. Her imagination runs wild and then fixates on Ian Baird. He’ll be working at the Langston Museum for a short stint as a consulting curator. He’s Scottish. He believes sex is fun to be had. He’s the perfect choice for a fling. She only has to get him break his rule about sleeping with co-workers. Seducing a man was on her bucket list…

Ian is no one’s fool and knows exactly what Jocelyn wants—him. If she didn’t work for the Langston Museum, he’d be more than happy to oblige any and every fantasy she desired, but she’s the curator. She’s sweet, inexperienced and well liked by everyone including the museum owner and director. Ian can’t risk losing such an important contact for his consulting business. Not even when everything within in him craves a taste of her.

When Jocelyn sets her sights on him, there’s no way Ian can deny her. They agree their affair will end in thirty days. No emotions, no entanglements, just sex. The closer the end date looms, they start to question if it’s possible to walk away. They’ll either have to come to terms of what they’ve become or stick to their original agreement. (via Goodreads)

My reaction the entire time I was reading this can best be summed up in this one gif:

However, as that probably wouldn’t be considered a sufficient book review, I suppose I’ll have to go on. I wanted to like this book. I wanted it to be the book about a hot Scot that made me smile after my recent struggles with Outlander. What I got was an unpolished piece of work that didn’t quite fulfill its purpose.

Want to know what was good?

The sex. The end.

Want to know what was “bad”?
Have a seat, and let me learn you a thing.

Inconsistency

For starters, the first section dropped a load of contradictions right at my feet that I just couldn’t get over. We begin by getting to know a little bit about our leading lady Jocelyn who comes off as a confident young woman doing her thing in the museum business. Outwardly, she’s a bit innocent (oh, you already know exactly where this story goes) when it comes to more risque endeavors, but she’s pretty strong-willed and sure of herself. The thing she wants is to knock out the things on her bucket list before her big 3-0 birthday– one of those things is to have a fling. Things are going fairly smoothly as we follow Jocelyn around  then… BAM. There’s a weird shift in POV to the main man Ian and, suddenly, Jocelyn is tripping over her words with all of these “Uhm”s and uncertainties and young-fanatic-meeting-the-Bieb hesitations.

Now, while reading, I let it slide at first. Somehow, I’d rationalized that this was just the version of Jocelyn that Ian was seeing (makes sense, right?). However, it literally never happens again which only made me want to fling the book across the room.

If… you know… it wasn’t on my precious baby Kindle.

Characters

Ian Baird as a character was annoying af. He was supposed to be Scottish (hence the title, obviously). However, his stereotypical Scottish mannerisms were awkward and came off forced more often than not. Now, I’m really not entirely sure what I expected from him. I can tell you what I didn’t expect, though: Random insertions of “Aye” and “Lass” to get those Scottish brownie points (Seriously, at one point during sex, he whispers “lass” or something like that; and I lost my shit). It made me cringe because there really doesn’t seem to be a reason Ian necessarily had to be a Scot other than to have that baller book title. Spoiler Alert: There is no kilt involved in this entire book. If you pick up this book expecting an authentic Scottish bae who occasionally dons a kilt, you are going to be sorely disappointed (as was I).  Sorry.

[Sidenote: Jocelyn somehow manages to keep mispronouncing “Aye” which is pretty hilarious considering that’s literally the only Scottish Ian speaks in her presence. You’d think she’d be kind enough to learn it.]

As for the couple together, the interactions between Jocelyn and Ian were kind of juvenile at times, and I found it difficult to buy into them being 30+. There was also a lack of development where the relationship was concerned. It felt like the heart of it happened “off-screen,” so to speak, leaving the reader to assume that somewhere within the three weeks together something happened to cause the feelings between the two to switch to love. Meh. As I stated in the introduction to my Reviews After Dark segment, I’m not too concerned with things like that when there is a supernatural reason. In Under His Kilt, there is nothing. These are just your average Joes who aren’t completely ready to settle down but end up wanting to (?) at the end.

Speaking of the end…

They better fucking not be talking about getting married…

The ending was definitely not my favorite. None of it seemed the least bit characteristic of Jocelyn (or Ian, for that matter). Also, Ian contradicts himself with his grand speech of putting your heart on the line when you love someone. You know, when he definitely didn’t do that and ended up being half the reason they were both sulking for 20 pages. While we’re at it, let’s all take the time out to give a round of applause to lack of communication (which is my absolute least favorite plot device).

This was not my the greatest romance book, but I’m kind of tempted to move on in the series to see if the story gets any better. We’ll see…