A Bound Heart by Laura Frantz: A Review

I was so excited about A Bound Heart. Laura Frantz has had a special place in my TBR list ever since I read The Ballantyne Legacy series. That series also awakened in me a love of anything Celtic, so when I discovered that her newest novel not only featured Scottish characters but was also set in Scotland, I was hooked and couldn’t wait to get my hands on it, despite the protestations of my bank account.

Luckily, thanks to the grace of God allowing a special offer to appear in my email for Kindle Unlimited, I was finally able to read A Bound Heart.

Would it be cheesy to say my heart was bound from the beginning? Yes? Okay.

The novel features Lark MacDougall, mistress of the stillroom. If you don’t know what a stillroom is, don’t fret. I had to look it up using the Kindle’s built-in dictionary. But Laura Frantz always provides enough detail to help you figure it out. If I didn’t the ability to hover over a word and have a definition pop up, I could still glean that the stillroom was an area where herbs were used to make remedies, soaps, etc. And Lark seems to be quite good at it.

Trouble arises when the laird’s wife, Isla, enters the stillroom without Lark’s knowledge. She takes a tincture marked as fertility herbs then falls off the cliff to her death. Lark is accused of murdering Mistress MacLeish and hauled off to gaol as false accusations spread.

The laird, Magnus MacLeish, is an old friend of Lark’s. He knows full well that she didn’t poison his wife. But when he comes to her defense, they both end up in trouble and bound for the colonies, leaving their beloved Scotland behind in exchange for the New World.

While I would love to blather on about my favorite scenes, I don’t wish to have any spoilers. So I’ll simply stick with saying this book is full of smugglers, an unrepentant captain, annoyingly persistent would-be suitors, and a hero that makes me want to learn Gaelic.

As for the romance, this wasn’t so much a “will they, won’t they” as a “if disaster could please stop striking, that’d be great.” It’s refreshing not watching characters go back and forth about their feelings but instead work on overcoming the obstacles between them. Laura Frantz’s romances are more about characters growing in the midst of the relationship rather than a tug-of-war between selfish desires and shallow misunderstandings. Her stories always contain a depth to them, and A Bound of Heart is no exception.

Characters grow amidst challenges, learning to trust in God’s provision and timing. There’s no rushed declarations of love but rather a carefully cultivated relationship based on a foundation of friendship. And thus my favorite quote from the novel: “Theirs had been a romance of restraint. Thwarted passion.” And the restraint was what I admired most about Lark and Magnus. They wait patiently for God’s timing. They have learned their own harsh lessons in the past that when you put your faith in God, you begin to see the mountains He moved on your behalf. And that is a lesson we could all learn.

You can grab your own copy at Amazon, Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, or Christianbook.com.

For another a review of another Laura Frantz novel, check out my review for An Uncommon Woman.