Surrender to An Irish Warrior by Michelle Willingham

Wow. So that's what Harlequin Historicals can be like.

I have to give a huge shout out to Super Librarian Wendy for this recommendations because there was no way this book would have normally crossed my path. Surrender to an Irish Warrior by Michelle Willingham made Wendy's best of 2010 Reads and thankfully she gave me just enough information that I wanted to read this book immediately.

Cut to three months later and finally after a few pages I got sucked right in.

I love all kinds of romance but I really appreciate darker stories because in real life, bad things happen to great people. In my early years of reading the hero always saved the heroine justintime. And even though it is a wonderful thing to have happen, there are many times in life when a hero gets there too late if at all. Knowing a hero is going to arrive in time to save the heroine from even a scratch takes away from any tension the author is trying to build - at least for me.

Okay, so that's probably a post for another day about how I like to see the pain and the joy, I want it all. So we'll leave off there for now.

Surrender to an Irish Warrior is truly a wonderful romance that brought a few tears to my eyes. There are no easy outs in this story and the journey from being two completely broken people to two healed lovers looking forward to the future was hard fought and won.

Trahern MacEgan is a man with only one thing on his mind - vengeance. While away for a few months his fiance Ciara was killed during a brutal and savage attack on her village. He is a former bard or story teller who had an easy smile and brought joy to many villages but now he only has one agenda and that is to avenge the death of Ciara.

While on this path he comes across a young girl who insists he help her and he cannot turn his back on an innocent. She brings him to a cottage where a women (Morren O'Reilly) is feverish and losing her baby. It is through a day or so that Trahern learns that Morren was gang raped by the men who destroyed her village and killed Ciara.

Once Trahern and Morren come together they are rarely apart and I like that kind of romance. It's a quiet story and as much as violence had happened it wasn't shown on the page until the near the end when it was about the villains and their due.

I really enjoyed watching these two fall in love and more importantly, to see how Morren would learn to accept the touch of Trahern. It's slow and beautifully done.

There are no big misunderstandings but there are a few places that were a little too sweet for lack of a better word but that was closer to the end of the story.

In the end, I would like to read other books by Ms. Willingham although Wendy has mentioned that this book was more of a departure from what she has written before. So with such a big TBR and TBB pile, I'm going to wait and see which of her other books I will pick up.

B+