2.5 stars. Romance. Slow going through the middle. ( )

Carrie McClelland is a writer of historical fiction. While visiting her agent in Scotland, she finds herself drawn to Slains Castle at Cruden Bay near Aberdeen. The book she's trying to write revolves around the failed attempt in 1708 to bring young King James back to Scotland and overturn the hated Union. Much of the plotting happened at Slains, on the north-east coast. Its Earl was the Lord High Constable of Scotland and with his mother, the widowed Countess, they rallied the Jacobites to their cause.

But Carrie's book needs a character who can observe and describe these events through her own personal experience. Thanks to her father's obsession with family history, she finds the perfect narrator: young Sophia Paterson. Sophia is an orphan and a distant relation to the Errolls of Slains. She's endured much in her young life, especially at the hands of her recently deceased uncle and guardian. She comes to Slains hoping for kindness and finds much more.

Meanwhile, Carrie starts experiencing strange coincidences as her novel takes shape. Life and history imitate art as her book almost writes itself. And in the small town of Cruden Bay she finds herself the object of one man's attention while another's face becomes that of her novel's hero... ( )

“My father always told me that the sea was in my blood” (2).

Emotionally draining at times (the longing and waiting of the characters), intellectually demanding at others (so many dates and events and historical figures to know and connect), but poetically stimulating throughout, even if much of the swirling, gray sea descriptions were a bit somber and melancholic. In the end of this maudlin Scottish seaside story, there is a beacon of light—the promise of the winter sea: the hope of what lies beneath.

While the atmospheric Slains Castle off the coast of Scotland sets the stage for this gothic story, it’s the characters and the rich historical plot—full of espionage and clandestine lovers and secret plotting—that kept me waiting and hoping and longing right along with the characters. I really loved these characters, especially Countess of Errol who seemed ahead of her time, not content to be a female bystander in this male-made war but leading like a General with intelligence and grace and shrewd confidence. I also loved professor Graham—his quiet confidence—and John Morray—his contrast of pirate persona and devoted lover—and Colonel Graeme—the perfect mix of a roguish yet reliable uncle.

Beyond the history and plot and characters and setting—all of which I loved—I also loved the bigger ideas in this book: genetic memory and blurred lines. Anything that explores the connection we have to our ancestors and the land of our roots is something that inspires me. The way Kearsley tells this dual-plotted story is original in blurring the lines between fact and fiction, imagination and memory—never knowing where one ends and the other begins. Intriguing, imaginative, and inspiring: a story that makes me want to know more about these determined Jacobites. For a reader who rarely reads series, I’m eager to explore the other Slains stories.
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Surprisingly good. Kept my interest all through. Two parallel stories: an author comes to the Aberdeen area and writes a novel about the 18th century and a Jacobite rebellion, which more or less "writes itself." She is told this is "genetic memory." The characters in her novel are from her own family's past but with her writing in her current love interest as her heroine's--a family ancestor.
Fact and fiction blur with amazing coincidences in plots. ( )

A writer finds herself drawn to a particular section of Scottish coastline while she's plotting her next book--but the book virtually starts to write itself as ideas flood her brain. Or are they memories? "Genetic memories"? Interesting premise, although not for the skeptic at heart. I viewed it as a more creative, intense way to tell a story that would have otherwise been a straight researching-family-history premise. Or that could have gone to the other end of the spectrum and been a time-slip novel.

It got bogged down (for me) in some of the political history of the Jacobites, which, no matter how hard I try to follow, makes my eyes glaze over. It was also a bit long for holding my interest steadily.
But the writing was quite literary in places. ( )