FINDING FRASER – KC Dyer
Berkley
ISBN-10:  0399584366
ISBN-13: 978-0399584367
May 2016
Fiction

Scotland – Present Day

Emma Sheridan makes a big decision at age twenty-nine that drives her sister crazy. Jobless, boy-friendless, and hardly swimming in money, Emma is selling everything she owns, starting a blog, and heading to Scotland. Why Scotland? Well, at nineteen, Emma read a book about a tall, red-headed Highlander named Jamie Fraser, and she's going to see if she can find his twenty-first century equivalent. FindingFraser.com , the blog, attracts a few far flung visitors who are anxious to follow Emma's adventure.

Emma's trek to Scotland takes a short side trip to Philadelphia where Herself (the author of the infamous book) was doing a book signing. That didn't go particularly well, but she did manage to meet a nice Scotsman, Jack Findlay, who gave her his card, and who is headed back to Scotland.

Once Emma lands in Scotland she makes a plan to retrace the steps of the heroine of the novel. At a pub in Edinburgh she meets Hamish, who seems to know as much about America as Emma does. But he goes off with another girl, and Emma boards a bus to Inverness – her first stop on her journey. And so her adventures begin. First of all, let it be known that Emma is on a very tight budget – meaning she has very little money for just about anything. She finds a room in a local hostel, and sets off to find the circle of stones and other sites that are in The Book .

Emma doesn't have the best luck in the world and she sometimes trusts too much. Much of this trip was spur of the moment planning, and Emma finds herself in all sorts of weird situations. Being a stickler myself for planning my own trips, I was appalled at the silly decisions Emma made, and how ill prepared she was for many situations. Still, the story was very entertaining, her blog readers adding some humor to the trip, and Emma eventually has a very satisfying conclusion to her journey.

Jani Brooks