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📚#5 in My Meg Cabot Read Through
I've reached the fifth book in my Meg Cabot readathon. Once again, it took me longer than expected to read, though in this case it was mostly my fault. [It's been a month.] Lady of Skye really feels like a Meg Cabot novel. Here I can tell that Meg is starting to find her voice and not just following the typical historical romance formula. My biggest issue is that I think the book is about fifty to a hundred pages too long. While the first three hundred pages felt like a breeze, the pacing afterwards started to feel so slow. It could've been improved upon with less pages imo.

The book is set in 1847 in the fictional village of Lyming on the not fictional island of Skye in Scotland. The female lead, Brenna Donnegal, is a nineteen going-on twenty-year-old young woman who wears pants, has medical knowledge, and truly cares about the people of Lyming. She is serving as the village's sort-of doctor until Dr. Reilly Stanton arrives. He's a thirty-year-old marquis who'd rather be addressed as "Dr." than "Lord," and has a strong moral compass. As a bonus, he's only the tiniest bit rake-ish [which all of Meg's male leads have been so far]. Their romance feels very natural, though I will say that the consummation of it happens a tad fast. And aside from the misunderstanding near the end, I really happen with the romance aspect over all.

Lady of Skye also deals with a real life topic of the time, which is cholera. At the time, the medical community still held some misbeliefs about how the disease was spread. Brenna, continuing the work of father, attempts to discern the real reason on how cholera is spread. This aspect of the story was intriguing, but I thought that it bogged down the plot towards the end. An interesting thing to note is that this is the first instance of one of Meg's heroines having a "cause" for lack of better word. All of Meg's heroines have so far been forward thinking, but Brenna is the first to have a steadfast belief and is actively working towards fixing it. Anyway, since I've read a lot of Meg's later books, I though that was an interesting thing I noticed.

I really enjoyed Lady of Skye and I'm hoping that February is a better reading month for me, but I'm currently sick so... who knows? On to Educating Caroline!