Scot Appeal
by Melissa Blue
Marcus Baird has been called a lot of things: Scottish bastard, heartless, ruthless, but thanks to his new neighbor, he could add ginger buff guy. The ruthless part is true, at least. His current occupation as a handyman is a front to fuel a bidding war between his former employer and the next private equity firm in his sights—an undertaking that should have all his attention, but Ivy makes him an offer he cannot refuse.
When Ivy Stewart imagined losing her virginity, she was at least a decade younger, a yes away from marriage, and her perfect man would make sweet, slow love to her. Waiting for that dream to unfold has kept her watching life from the sidelines. She's done biding her time. It's foolhardy to choose Marcus. He's a man with secrets and an ugly past, but he's honest about what their relationship will be, charming and...he's very good with his hands.
Since Marcus took Ivy into his bed, he's lived a lie. He could be the man she needs. He isn't a workaholic and he doesn't really have a heart of stone. But it's only a matter of time before Ivy finds out the truth, and once again he's nothing but a Scottish bastard.
Spice Level: 4.25/6 | Story Score: 7/10 | Rating: 4/5 |
I needed a book with a tartan pattern on the front or a kilt wearing character. I found this one and it was a new author, so I thought I’d give it a go.
Marcus is a billionaire businessman that is playing a game with multiple personal investment companies in order to gain a better position. He’s quit his job and became a handyman, hoping the bad PR will motivate his former company to beg for forgiveness as the new CEO tanks the company, or that a new company will sweep him off his feet. Ivy is his neighbor. They meet, there’s tension.
Ivy is a thirty-something-year-old virgin due to her grandparents’ overly-conservative influence. On top of that, she believed in the idea of the one and every time she found a flaw in her partner, she passed. But she’s tired of that and Marcus makes her feel things.
They start a “fling” where he offers to help her figure out everything she likes about sex. Eventually, his business-centric and past-trauma personality pushes her away.
Honestly, in the first 45% of this book, I was so bummed that I’d chosen it. I wasn’t committed to any characters, I hadn’t felt anything as I read, and 3rd person POV is always hard after reading a bunch of 1st. But, by 50%, I was ok and by about 78%, I was happy to be reading it. I’m even looking forward to reading a couple of the others, I think.
There’s nothing to really spoil about this book. It isn’t great. I’m not going to run out and recommend it to everyone. However, I’m still happy that I read it and that I found the author. I would recommend it to people if it fit criteria they were needing. There were no kinks leaned into real hard, but there was a brief smattering of spanking, biting, chasing, and a sex tape.
-SPOILERS-
This is mostly my attempt at putting more details in here so I can remember the book later.
I think maybe I need to start reading books that are closer to the 400 page length. I just feel like so much stuff has been glossed over in the last countless number of books I’ve read. Maybe this one is because I started at book 5 and not book 1 so I didn’t have a full background. But I still feel like so much was glossed over within the story. Maybe I just like details too much, I’m not sure.
Spanking: this story is one of the first ones to pointedly spell out that spanking can just be because they like it and not as a punishment. HALLELUJAH! I am not into punishment - as noted on 75 other reviews - but I’m not against spanking in general. I enjoyed this.
I also enjoyed that her choice for still being a virgin was two-fold. I understood her hesitation based on the gossip of her grandparents very well. Not because of my grandparents, but because of the boys I hung out with in high school. I didn’t want to be one of the girls they all shared details about that everyone DID NOT deserve to know. Likewise, I wanted to wait until it was the right person. While Ivy’s right person was supposed to be her husband and the man she wanted babies with, mine just had to be someone that I knew I wouldn’t regret. Either way, it resonated with me in a way that I liked. I also appreciated that she admitted that she hated hearing sex jokes and not understanding them, I loved that she admitted afterward that she understood why sex made some women do stupid things, and I loved that she admitted to eating her words a few times. Really, Ivy was a great character. She was so absolutely relatable. She was smart - but not a corporate woman, which I loved, because not all smart women want to be in the corporate world. Having a gentler job doesn’t diminish your intelligence. I loved that he KNEW she was smart and he doted on that fact.
I didn’t have the same fondness for Marcus, but I still loved his wicked mouth. He was a fairly typical self-sabotaging corporate type. I didn’t quite expect that to play as big of a role as it did, but it was pretty well done. I appreciated the fact that he listened to her and learned from his mistakes (like her preferred method of apologies) and such. They were both very much family-loving and I can appreciate that more than words are capable of expressing.
Ivy was a non-white character, which may be the first (or very nearly) for me. Not in a I-look-for-white-ladies way, but normally I just want a book that doesn’t focus on stereotypes of cultures, ethnicities, and whatnot for the women. Not even that they’re always wrong, but that I like to be able to connect to them. I also try to stay away from books that focus on the female character’s looks because most are so stereotypically pretty (i.e. size 0) that I can’t relate. I enjoyed this one because she was a woman. She happened to be African American, but it wasn’t a part of the story in a way that they kept telling me what she looked like. His being Scottish was a much bigger factor in the story.
Book #5 in the Under the Kilt series | 328 Pages | Trope Challenge: Neighbors |
“You can sit on my face and let me eat you. Every time I taste your come, I'll give your arse a nice little smack. Not for punishment. Never to say you're bad, but because you're a lass who tastes so sweet when she comes. And I love it when you soak my tongue.”
- Marcus, Scot Appeal by Melissa Blue
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