Reviewed by Tori (Vicki)
TITLE: My Highland Cowboy 
AUTHOR: Alexa Milne
PUBLISHER: Pride Publishing
LENGTH: 196 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 6th, 2017
BLURB:
How long do you need before you know?
Duncan McLeish owns a ranch. Unlike most ranches, this one is in the Scottish Highlands. Having inherited a failing farm from his grandfather, he turns it into a successful business. He has friends, he loves his home, but he’s lonely, and not even infrequent trips to Glasgow and Edinburgh slake that thirst to find someone. Then Drew Sinclair walks into his life.
Drew Sinclair is tantalizingly close to getting his clothes brand noticed in the industry. He and his business partner, Joy, design individual dresses, while on the side, Drew designs and produces a line of men’s lingerie. He visits Scotland to design dresses for his sister, Jenna, who is marrying Duncan’s best friend at Christmas.
Duncan and Drew have nothing except their Highland upbringing in common, but they say opposites attract, and the attraction is immediate. Is this simply a summer fling, or can two men who live such opposite lives, miles away from each other, find a way to love?
REVIEW:
This is the tale of Duncan and Drew, and how they fall in luuuuurve…..
As you can see from the blurb, these two have one thing in common, they both are from the Scottish Highlands, but that’s pretty much it! Duncan has stayed in Scotland, settling on his grandfather’s farm and turning it in to a Texas style dude ranch. He wears plaid shirts, a Stetson hat, and cowboy boots! He raises cattle and a few horses, but mostly focuses on growing his business. He employees a few people, who have become more like family to him. His best friend from school, Craig, lives nearby and is soon to marry Jenna, a local veterinarian that takes care of Duncan’s animals. Jenna’s brother, Drew, is coming up from London to design dresses for the girls for the winter wedding planned at Duncan’s ranch. Drew may have been raised in Scotland on an estate, but he is a city boy at heart. He is a clothing designer, both women’s dresses, and a line of men’s lingerie. He’s staying at Duncan’s ranch for a few days as he works up designs for dresses for the wedding, and becomes quite enamored with Duncan, the sexy cowboy…
This gets our two men together and starts them on a dramatic story. It’s a fairly typical story from here, the two spend some time together doing naughty things, and nice things, both inside the bedroom and outside, and have some big issues to work through. But it’s been done before, and there are no surprises in this plot. Duncan lives in Scotland and is happy on his ranch, and Drew lives in London, and is happy with his life there. How can the two be together? Who will make a sacrifice? How will this work out?
What makes this story interesting is the characters. Both Duncan and Drew certainly, but the side characters as well. I liked Jenna and Craig, and the folks that work on the ranch. Duncan has a dog I liked, and we get to see some interaction with various animals on the ranch. Drew interacts with his friends in London, who I also liked. The sex scenes were well done, and I totally felt the bond that forms between the men. I loved Drew’s sexy underwear, and Duncan’s enjoyment of them. I liked the process Duncan goes through as a character, he totally opens up over the story, from a lonely man, to a lover. I think he changed most of the two of them. I liked the book overall, the writing was good, but the plot was just so-s0. There just wasn’t anything I hadn’t read before. It all comes down to a lack of conversations and openness between Drew and Duncan. That gets old after reading it in multiple books. I wanted them to sit and talk! So much drama could have been avoided…
The thing that surprised me was how not-Scottish these characters seemed. There was very little regional phrasing or dialect, no accents written in to their dialogue (too much can be a bad thing, but a little is fine), things like that. A bit, but really not much. I checked to see where the author lives, because it made me feel like it was written by an American, but her bio says she lives in the UK. It wasn’t something that ruined the story for me, but I did think about it several times over the story.
This is the first book I’ve read by Alexa Milne, I do need to check out some of her others. I’m always looking for new to me authors, so I’m glad I read this one, even though I didn’t find the plot particularly interesting. It was a good way to spend my reading time this weekend, sexy men are always a good thing!
RATING: 
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