Meh. Nicola Cornick is an author I can normally count on to provide a couple of hours of good historical romance reading, but "Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress" wasn't one of her better stories. She states in her intro that this book is her homage to RLS and it was easy to see that, however, the light-heartedness usually present was just missing for me in this tale.

When Catriona is left destitute and homeless after the deaths of both parents, she discovers her father actually had a brother! She's bookish and rather more fiery that most young women of her day, but she's very glad that she has a family to fall back on, even if it was one she never knew about before. The only downside she can see is the arrogant rogue that's sent to escort her to her new family. Why, less than 48 hours after meeting her, her's offering her carte blanche!

Sinclair will be an Earl one day, but he refuses to live the life of leisure his uncle, the Earl, demands. Instead he joined the British Navy at sixteen and has spent his years since then sowing his oats. He's captivated by Catriona's fire from the first, so when they end up kidnapped and shipwrecked together he has a devil of a time controlling his 'urges'.

I think I enjoyed the play on RLS's Kidnapped more than anything else in this book. By writing in the RLS style, it was hard for me to get a good 'feel' for the characters and their relationship. It had a more stilted tone and the hero and heroine stayed figures on paper rather than coming alive for me. The romance part of the book was definitely G-rated and the nasty plot at the end seemed more contrived to force a happy ending than something that came up naturally. But even though this one wasn't a winner, I'll continue to read Cornick's books because her normal writing style is one I enjoy. ( )