Treasured

April 21, 2014
Camp (Mesmerized) launches the Secrets of the Loch series with a sweet story set in 1807 Scotland. Isobel Rose and her dotty Aunt Elizabeth are enjoying a rainy evening at home when Londoner Jack Kensington arrives and claims to be the new owner of the Rose estate, Baillannan. It seems that Isobel’s irresponsible brother, Andrew, wagered Baillannan in a card game and lost. Now Jack is come to claim and sell the property: loch, stock, and crofters. Isobel’s only hope of keeping her home is to entice social climber Jack into a marriage of convenience; but he agrees for the sake of Isobel herself, not her profitable estate or the rumors of hidden treasure. Entertaining side characters lend a Highlands version of smalltown charm to this placid, straightforward romance.

Starred review from June 1, 2014
Isobel Rose's profligate brother, Andrew, has lost their ancestral Scottish estate, Baillannan, in a card game. Jack Kensington, the Englishman who won their home, intends to sell it. But Isobel has a proposition. If Jack will marry her, she'll continue to manage their holdings and send the profits to him in London. The marriage will, she tells him, be strictly a business arrangement. Jack is quite taken with the spunky beauty and agrees to her terms. He's determined to make it a marriage in fact, however, not one of convenience. Unfortunately, there's someone who'd rather see Jack dead than wed, and no one knows who that is. Camp's witty historical romance is set during the Highland Clearances, a period when tenants were cleared or evicted from their homes by their rich landlords to make room for the more profitable venture of sheep farming. Camp deftly weaves together the enticing elements of her novelsuspense, family relations, the mystery of an old murder, a hidden treasure, and, of course, an unlikely romance. There's something for everyone in the first book of the Secrets of the Loch trilogy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)