Of Swords and Parasols

This is a medieval romance set in the 1290s and centering around Edward I's attempts to take over Scotland. I really liked the first half, which focused on two childhood friends, Isabel, who becomes one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting and gets involved in courtly scheming of all kinds, and Rachel, whose family moves to Scotland after Edward exiled the Jews. Both acquire strapping Scottish rebel hunks as love interests, as one does, but I really liked the focus on and contrast between Isabel and Rachel's lives and how the politics of the time affected both. it focused more on Isabel than Rachel, which disappointed me a bit because I really liked the idea of a medieval romance with a Jewish heroine, even though I actually did like Isabel more, and Jewish protagonists are extremely rare in romance novels. Then again, Isabel also had more adventures and got to show how she dealt with things more, so it's a bit of a catch 22 situation there to a degree.


The second half was mostly Braveheart ground, but with a much greater resemblance to actual history. It was good, but forgot about the girls for long stretches, and so I didn't like it as much as the first half. I still really liked the parts with Isabel, but thought Rachel's parts in the second half came close to punishing her for making smart choices instead of romantic choices. While the second half wasn't as much my thing as the first half, it was still very good and I thought both romantic plotlines were well done, and plan to read Givens's other books. (I, uhm, wish they weren't all Scottish though.) After Braveheart came out it seemed like every other historical romance had a Scottish hero, half of whom got to teach stuck up English girls about how awesome Scotland was and how bad England was, and I kinda got antagonistic towards anything resembling a Scotsman in a romance novel for a few years there.