Deceive Me In Ireland by Whitney K-E

Whitney K-E is back again, doing what she does very well – the Irish/Aussie romance.  From Co. Kerry in Ireland to Melbourne, Australia and back, this tale of love and romance set in the equestrian world had me smiling.  I enjoyed Cara and Will’s story.  But frankly, I don’t know how Cara didn’t murder William stone dead at times.  He was one of the worst ‘slaggers’ I’ve ever come across. 

You don’t know what a ‘slagger’ is?  Let me enlighten you.  In Ireland, we have a special custom known as ‘slagging’.  Well, we did when I lived there.  It involves finding the vulnerable spots in a person.  Then teasing them mercilessly about it.  And William was practically slagging Cara from page one.  When they first met, he told her his name was Patrick.  Then she later found out his name was something else.  I mean, how do you trust a man like that?  If he could deceive you when he didn’t know you were his future sister-in-law’s cousin, what does that say about his integrity?

Personally speaking, I think young Cara was way too forgiving.  And there’s something else as well.  She leapt into the leaba (that means ‘bed’ in Irish) with the fellow far too soon if you ask me.  Not that anyone’s asking.   I wouldn’t let a joker like that lay a finger on me until he’d put a ring on one of mine first. I was dying for Cara to give him a kick in his arse. These  hot-blooded Irish men have to be handled correctly, you know?  Otherwise, they’d blight your life with all their smart alec answers and their ready wit. 

It’s a good  question all right.  Can a holiday romance really work out?  I mean, you meet on vacation and there’s all this rapt emotion.  But you have a life back home, right?  Gone are the days when you just dropped everything and followed your man halfway around the world.  Well, I wish I’d known that before I followed my true love wherever.

Take two likeable, totally realistic characters, a few kilos of attraction, a few litres of emotion and a few grains of anger and annoyance and what have you got?  Will and Cara’s story, actually.  All too real.  All too human.  All too believable.  And all too annoying.  Will, I mean, not Cara.

I’m one of those people who finds love scenes a bit TMI.  It’s quite enough for me to know the main characters are getting it together. It’s not that I have anything against sex.  Far from it. I’m one of those (probably weird) individuals who would rather do it than read about it.  Whitney K-E might be a young one, but she writes with a skill beyond her years.  The writing was so realistic that at one stage, when Will and Cara were having a particularly lengthy ‘session’, I thought I should let them get on with it and go read a book until they were finished.  Then I realized I was reading a book.
So kudos to Whitney K-E for this romantic Irish tale.  It brought a smile to my face, a tear to my eye and occasionally, a frown to my forehead (that was William’s fault!).  So go ahead, buy it, read and enjoy.  And yes, it was authentic.

Any complaints?  Well, I did find it slightly overdone when the writing veered into an Irish accent, when William or any of the Irish characters were speaking.  Then it occurred to me that as an Irish person myself, I could already hear their accents.  An Australian or  US reader wouldn’t necessarily.  So it’s okay.
Good one, Whitney K-E.

I received an advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.