This is an OK start to the Highland Outlaw series, but it was a bit too short to have enough character development. My rating is 3 stars.
I liked both Jack and Bella, but I thought they fell in love a little too quickly for it to be believable. Bella got over her fear of Jack and his brothers way sooner than most women would -- after all, they were thieves and did kidnap her. I also thought Jack would have taken longer to realize that Bella was not cold and spoiled like the English nobles he had known, especially since he hated the English so much after their king slaughtered so many innocent people.
My main complaint, though, is that I wish the story had been longer, to allow for more character development. It would also have allowed for Jack and Bella to have a more believable time frame to fall in love.
My rating system is below.
1 star -- Hated it, or did not finish. I usually only give this rating if some of the content is truly objectionable to me, like if one of the main characters does something really awful, and gets away with it.
2 stars -- Didn't like it. This rating usually means that I thought the writing wasn't very good, the editing was terrible, I didn't like the characters, or it had other major flaws.
3 stars -- I liked it, but had some minor issues with it. This rating means that there were minor editing issues, the story needed more character development, it was just too unrealistic, or had some other fairly minor issue. The majority of books I read get this rating – I do not consider it a bad rating.
4 stars -- I liked it a lot. This is a high rating for me, and I rarely give a higher one.
5 stars -- I loved it, and will probably read it again. Very few books are good enough to get this rating from me. The ones that do are usually classics.