This was a lively story of childhood friends becoming married lovers. The heroine was dropped off as a baby in a basket to a clan. She was raised with the children as part of the family and k ow her hero. The hero was from a neighboring clan. He is also the younger brother of the man who married the heroines foster sister. It is a very long story with many players. It became hard to disti gush a of the characters because many of them had been featured in past stories. Since this is the first book I read of the series, it was fresh and I was very confused at ti.es as a minor player came in and I didn't know the back story. It would have been helpful to read the books in order, but not mandatory. This was. Long book and there were times that the story dwelt on the off shoits instead of the main story line and I would tend to skim along until I was back o to a main story line. There was a lot of intrigue and action since this was one of the many times when Scotland was fighting with England. I give this book 4.5 stars because I had to skim and some parts just did not add to the overall effect of the story. It would not have been as long and drawn out if some of the information wasn't placed into the book.