Never Seduce a Scot by Maya Banks: Book Review

Never Seduce a Scot is one of those books I’ve seen constantly recommended on Reddit threads in r/HistoricalRomance. Yes, this is where I get my book recs from, especially historicals, and it’s been great so far! 

And this sounded like a great recommendation too; the hero was described as swoony and sweet, the heroine as strong and capable. The premise promised Scottish highlands, medieval castles, dealing with disability, rival clans, impossible romance, and arranged marriage. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

So I settled in for an enjoyable afternoon. The weather was suitably moody, the nature lushly green through my window, the tea steaming, and I thought — what could be more perfect?

Boy oh boy…

The spoiler-free TLDR: Never Seduce a Scot promises great things but delivers none of them. The prose is weak and repetitive, the dialogue stilted, the setting and time period not researched or realized well enough. The romance progresses very quickly, with very little actual conflict. I don’t believe the disability aspect was handled well either. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book at all; but take my opinion with a grain of salt because it appears many people do like it. 

• My rating: 1⭐
• Heat level: explicit sex scenes, nothing too crazy. 
• Standalone or series? This is the first part of an ongoing series. Can be read as a standalone.
• Content warnings: Threats of domestic abuse and torture, mentioned death of a parent, some bad language regarding the heroine’s disability
• Page count: 373 pages
• Read if: Though I didn’t like it and don’t overall recommend it, I know there are people who do, so there must be a reason for that (?). Perhaps give it a go if you like arranged marriage trope without all the usual uncertainty? Or if you really crave a medieval histrom set in Scotland?

And now, without further ado, into the review.

Thoughts & Feelings

I say this all the time, but it bears repeating: I can ignore weak prose if the story/the romance is engaging enough. And in the beginning, that’s what I did. Sure, I wasn’t blown away, but I could look past that for the story that seemed fun at first. 

But then I read some more and everything started grating on me, so I’m going to be nit-picky. 

First of all, the prose is so sparse. I’ve grown to expect wonderful descriptions of settings from historical romance, to be lulled and cozied up into these old worlds. But here, I just couldn’t picture anything at all; I might as well have been in a white room. No matter how hard I tried to get the words to turn into actual scenes, I couldn’t get there. 

And fine, I could live with that, I guess, if the dialogue wasn’t so stilted. But the heroes talked like robots, with zero nuance. 

The lack of research is pretty obvious here as well. Sure, the author added words like “lass” and “aye” here and there, but this isn’t enough. There’s no understanding of life in a medieval castle, what goes on there, what do people actually do. It’s just whatever the narrative needs. And the story is told through this modern gaze — people say all the right things (except the villains, of course), they think the right things. Oh sure, there’s “woman is property” thrown in there once in a while, but it never really goes beyond that. 

And not that I want misogyny and awful treatment of women and people with disabilities in my books, because I do not, but none of what happens here rings as true or realistic. 

Then there were the constant repetitions, not only of thoughts and feelings (even once we’re supposed to be past them), but also of words. The author would repeat the same words and phrases within one paragraph or even a sentence. 

For some reason, that’s a particular pet peeve of mine. Nothing pulls me out of the story faster than that. 

But then on top of that, there’s everything else. 

Let’s begin with our heroine, Eveline. She’s this perfect, beautiful, kind woman, and everyone loves her or grows to love her. When needed, she’s shy and timid, but then when the narrative needs her to, she’s proud, combative, confident (think Snow White turning into Merida occasionally because the author suddenly remembers she’s Scottish). 

And even though she’s been kept away from the world, never been in love, and her previous fiance was going to torture her, she immediately trusts the hero, nevermind that she’s been raised to hate his clan and think they’re beasts; nevermind that she knows the hero probably hates her. No reservations at all. 

She’s happy she’s getting married. She wants to be a proper wife, sleep with her husband, and be intimate with him. The hero originally set her up in a separate room, where she can be on her own; but oh no, she moved back to his chamber, because who doesn’t want to sleep with a strange man who may or may not hate you? 

It genuinely made no sense. If it was me, I’d want my own room and all the space I can get from these new people.

And she claims constantly she’s a laird’s daughter, so she knows how things work around the castle, but then suddenly forgets whenever the narrative needs her to be the poor wide-eyed girl who’s been grievously abused. 

For example, at one point (like two days into her life at the new castle), she decides that she wants to fit in and do something useful, so she thinks that she should run the household. To do that, she goes to a woman who runs the castle staff, and this woman talks her into doing the work herself. Stuff like scrubbing the floors, starting fires, washing pots and pans, doing the laundry. 

Which, first of all, is stupid. Has she ever seen her mother do these things? Of course not. But will she be stupid for the sake of the narrative, and do all of these chores, so the hero has to defend her and threaten more of his people? Yes, yes she will. 

Second of all, oh boo-hoo, poor little princess. It’s such laborious work that she falls asleep in the afternoon and doesn’t wake up until the next day. She’s so tired, so spent that she can barely climb the stairs. Like seriously? Nevermind that all women in the castle do the same and more. Nevermind that even these days, most of the housework is the same and women do these things without fainting like fragile little birds after a day of chores. 

Then there’s the fact that she didn’t feel safe in her home — where people fawn over her, mind you — but feels safe in the home of the rival clan (safe enough to speak, that is). It would make sense if her family was mean to her, so she refused to speak and acted “daft” to spare herself some pain, and then after a while with the new clan, she started to feel safe enough to act like herself. 

But her family was lovely to her, and she starts to talk after like two days in her new home. Seriously? 

This could have been such a good slow burn, such a good, tender, loving romance. She could have stayed in her separate room and then slowly opened up, over time, they could have fallen in love slowly, for some real reasons other than “he’s handsome” and “she’s beautiful”. Instead we went to immediate payoff to awful results. 

They kiss at 36% which tells you everything you need to know. Going by the time passage in the book, they’re fully in love by day three of her being in Graeme’s castle, she feels safe enough to speak, people are expected to adore her, etc.

And the hero is meant to be so perfect, but he’s so boring. He never has a bad thing to say about Eveline, he’s always just and kind, he doesn’t sleep with other women, he lets his sister learn to read and write, has infinite empathy for Eveline even at the expense of his own clan which he claims to love. 

He is immediately understanding when Eveline does start to speak, and doesn’t care that she deceived him at all. No one does, in fact. 

Oh, and his is the only voice Eveline can hear (she can sort of hear him, like vibrations, rumbles, not clearly). How lovely! Between two clans full of warrior men, her father and brothers (who are very manly-man as well), his brothers, etc., you’re telling me no one, not one single of those men has a voice deep enough for her to hear? Just Graeme? Really?

But there’s not much to say about him at all. He’s whatever Eveline needs from one moment to another. He doesn’t have a personality of his own, but exists to take care of her, pleasure her (and her first always; he does this perfectly even though he’s never done it before), defend her against anyone who even looks at her wrong, be patient and kind when she needs it, to let her do whatever she wants whenever she wants it.

The other characters are not much better. 

His brothers are also perfect and they exist as a sounding board for him to talk about his feelings (in a “had 10 years of therapy” way as well). They’re also there to confirm how beautiful and perfect our heroine is, how brave and smart she is and become her loyal servants after two days even though they wanted all her family dead prior to that.

But she never does anything intelligent at all. 

They claim that her ability to read lips is extraordinary. But the author forgets that older people and people hard of hearing existed and that reading lips has been a thing they did for ages. It’s not like Eveline discovered it. 

And she can read lips easily, no matter how quickly someone speaks or how far they are. She just can, if lips are moving, she can read them perfectly. 

After three years of not speaking, she can suddenly do lengthy monologues without issue, even though she’s deaf and again, hasn’t spoken in three years. Also, how did she never accidentally speak? Like if she stubbed her toe, there was never any “ouch, ouch”? Or something? I feel like it’s extremely hard not to say anything at all if you still have that ability, no?

And after three years of being deaf, no one, absolutely no one in her family notices that she is looking at their lips when they speak and that she understands them perfectly well? But Graeme does within like three days? What?

Graeme expects his clan to be kind to Eveline immediately (because she’s a pretty girl), and when they won’t (because less than a week has passed and they need to adjust after hating all of her clan for ages), he starts banishing people left and right. First one batch of women from the castle, then another, then another. At that point, I really expected someone to challenge him, and kick him out of his spot as a laird because clearly he cares more about this new enemy girl than the people he grew up around? But no, that doesn’t happen.

Also, no kilts at all?

Every other woman other than Eveline, her mother and Graeme’s sister is a villain, and Eveline mostly gets tortured by women. They’re the ones with issues with her, and all of them are awful and terrible for harming poor baby Eveline.

And that’s the thing as well: Eveline is constantly infantilized. She cannot possibly be swimming (even though she clearly dived in; it looks very different when someone dives in vs. when someone starts drowning), so big old Graeme has to save her. She’s a fragile, delicate creature, she can’t be allowed to do anything and must always be protected.

But then somehow, despite all the ogling Graeme is doing, he is conveniently unaware of anything being wrong (i.e. when the women in the castle make her do work and she’s tired and her hands blistered) until such a time when it gets to be too much and it’s such a big deal he has to threaten people about it.

So, all in all, this is the worst historical romance book I’ve read yet. I thought I was on a perfect run, riding high, enjoying myself, but then this book happened, and now I think I need a break from histrom. And I trusted that, despite the corny cover and even cornier title (which has nothing to do with the story, by the way), Never Seduce a Scot would be my next favorite book. Just goes to show that sometimes you should judge a book by its cover. 

And I usually like to conclude my reviews with some positives, and thoughts on who might like a certain book even if I disliked it. But genuinely, I can’t think of anything right now.

Honestly, just don’t read it. If you love it, I’m super happy for you, but I don’t even know how I would recommend this.

This almost never happens to me, but I genuinely wish I could delete it from my Kindle library entirely. Unfortunately, I paid full price for it so that’s not happening. If I got it on discount, I would have deleted it. 

Maybe if you really want an arranged marriage story without all the usual elements and uncertainty? If you really want deaf rep (but not done all that well)? If you really want a Scottish Medieval romance, and there’s nothing else you can read?

I mean, this book has more than 15k five-star reviews on Goodreads, so maybe I’m the crazy one. Either way, I wouldn’t rush to it, and maybe give it a go whenever it goes on sale. 

In the meantime, for those of you who have read it: what did you think? Anyone hate it as much as I do? And please please please give me all your best arranged marriage recs. Much obliged!