I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a wonderful, cozy book and I loved all of the characters!

I have read and enjoyed quite a few books written by Lisa Hobman and now when I start one of her books I am 99% sure I will love it. Iam pleased to say I was not wrong this time!

I loved the setting in the Highlands and the contrast between the life Olivia was living in New York and the life there in Scotland and also the contrast between what various people find important in life. The story also deals with some difficult topics that put extra pressure on families, no matter whether they are biological families or not and I thought Lisa dealt with them in a heart-warming and touching way. Besides the family dramas, friendship played a huge part in this story. Re-connecting with childhood friends and newer best friends and the dogs were just the cherry on top.
This story was sweet and touching and really warmed my heart. It was probably not my favorite Lisa Hobman story, but I still loved it and now miss Olivia and some of the other characters.

Liv McBain, fashion designer is living her best life in NYC until she receives a call from Kerr her brother, bearing bad news...it's now time for her to head home to Scotland.

Hobman's books are always five star winners for me, they're heart-warming, enjoyable and an absolute delight to read.

The characters are realistic, engaging and I loved the childhood sweethearts/friends to lovers trope.

Drumblair Castle sounds amazing, can you imagine inheriting a castle set in the glorious Scottish Highlands? I think I'd feel like royalty!

Many thanks to Rachel's Random Resources for my tour spot.

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I would like to thank Rachel’s Random Resources, Boldwood Books, Netgalley and Lisa Hobman for the E ARC of this book.
I was so pleased to be chosen for the Blog Tour of this book, which is published on the 4th of April 2023.
We meet Liv McBain, she was brought up in her ancestral home Drumblair Castle, which she swapped for an apartment share in New York where she is a fashion designer. She loves her job and is really happy.
She has an older brother Kerr, who is conceited, and thinks the world owes him as he is going to be the next Laird. I have to say I didn’t not like him as a character, but I don’t think you were supposed to.
Liv’s life is turned upside down when Kerr phones her one night with devastating news that has Liv coming back to Scotland quickly. Her life is never going to be the same again and she has some very hard decisions to make. Can friends old and new help her and will she be happy?
I really enjoyed the setting and the characters. Liv was such an engaging character and you wanted her to succeed. She wants to help people and does all she can to do so. I also liked that she didn’t give up on her own dreams. This was an enjoyable read and my 1st by this author but won’t be my last, would recommend it.

I am a sucker for a book that is set in Scotland - one of my favourite places in the world! Since I am stuck in Australia, I will just have to do my travelling via the interesting books that come my way :)

Olivia is living her dream in New York as a fashion designer. Life in New York is very different to where she came from, as the second child of an aristocratic family in Scotland. She likes that she can be a bit anonymous in New York, sharing an apartment with a good friend and just living a single life. Then, everything changes and she has to go back to Scotland.

I have to admit that Olivia's brother Kerr rubbed me up the wrong way from the start, which just goes to show how talented this author is!

Trials and tribulations follow for Olivia but there are some sunny patches too. Brodie was lovely and I adored the doggos :)

All in all, this was a very good book and I enjoyed reading it.

4.5 stars from me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Boldwood Books.

Olivia MacBain, 28, has a great job as a designer working for huge fashion designer, Nina Picarro, in New York. This has long been Olivia’s dream and she is thrilled with her job and her wonderful boss. Even her best friend and roommate, Harper, works as a fashion photographer for Nina as well.

At the end of a successful fashion show, Olivia gets a call from her brother, Kerr, informing her that their mother has died. She lost her father some years ago. Olivia’s family lives in Scotland and are the owners of their family home, Drumblair Castle. Her father was Laird Gregor MacBain and her mother was Lady Freya MacBain. The family’s castle is huge and elegant and has been in the MacBain family for many generations.

Grief-stricken, Olivia heads to Scotland for her mother’s funeral. There, she is faced with her spoiled, selfish, arrogant, and down-right nasty older brother, Kerr. He pretends to cry but she knows it’s all for show. He lives in a 10-bedroom family villa not far from the castle. He drinks too much and gambles away lots of money. Olivia and her mother both have had to bail him out all of his life. He just wants all this funeral business over with as he knows he is the heir and he plans on selling off the castle and surrounding property. Olivia is appalled at this. But at the reading of her mother’s will, there are some shocking things revealed that totally changes the future.

At the funeral, she encounters a childhood foe, Brodie, who used to taunt her and now works as a gardener at the castle. Seeing him again opens all kinds of emotions inside Olivia. She hopes they can become friends and put aside their animosity from their younger years.

Faced with a dilemma after the reading of the will, Olivia has some big decisions to make and with the help of her friends, she heads down a new path in life.

I really liked this book and found Olivia to be a strong woman. I pegged Brodie’s problem right away and am glad it was addressed in this story. All very good characters and a terrific plot. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I do seem to have read more than a few books set around castles in the Highlands recently – perhaps it’s a sign that I really do need to plan a long overdue visit next year. But this book opens in New York, where Olivia has built a highly successful career as a fashion designer, on the verge of becoming second-in-command to her mentor Nina Piccaro – until she receives an appallingly insensitive call from her brother Kerr with news of her beloved mother’s death, and travels home to Drumblair for the funeral and winding up of the estate. Her brother already has major changes planned – he doesn’t share her passion for their heritage, focused only on the money – and she’s resigned to the fact that it will all be frittered away. But things don’t quite turn out that way, her mother having made her own plans for the future – and Olivia finds herself with difficult choices to be made and a future that might look rather different from the one she’d expected.

One of the joys of this book is the friendships – Nina and Harper in New York, Skye and Bella in the Highlands, all particularly well-drawn characters. Uncle Innes proves to be a rock too, and I particularly liked housekeeper Mirren who shows her such tender care through the grief of her loss. The less said about brother Kerr the better – he really is quite appalling, and a constant thorn in her side. But then there’s Brodie – her childhood friend, their relationship mislaid in their teens when he became involved with a different crowd who made her life rather a misery, now back at Drumblair to help his father with the maintenance of the grounds after Kerr summarily dismissed the other staff. He’s gorgeous, but there’s little chance of him becoming a love interest – he’s now married, his wife at home in Edinburgh, and she’s not sure she’s entirely forgiven him for that youthful betrayal. But he’s a man with secrets – a difficult situation very sensitively handled, and a serious note amid the lightness of the story. Owain, laird-to-be, looks like a far more suitable prospect for romance – even if his parents’ enthusiasm for a match might be a touch off-putting – but he doesn’t really make her heart race, and might just have a few deeply hidden secrets of his own.

The book’s romance is beautifully handled, but there’s a lot more to the story – it’s difficult not to go into some of the twists and turns, but I really don’t want to spoil it for others. The author is an excellent storyteller, and has a lovely emotional touch – she really captures Olivia’s grief at her mother’s death, her worries and uncertainties when her future role becomes mapped out, and her joy when the pieces begin to fall into place. The detail is really lovely too – the well-drawn setting, the set pieces and occasions, the adorable dogs who thread through the story, the perfect musical accompaniment the author gives all her books. While there is a touch of darkness, and a few issues that need resolution, this was a relatively light and rather lovely read I’d very much recommend to others.

I love this authors books and they have definitely made me want to visit Scotland one day as love the descriptions of the different places and the sights and sounds.

The setting of the castle has a magical fairytale quality about it and would make the perfect back drop to making this story a hall mark movie.

This was a charming romantic read with the main character having to make a lot of decisions along the way about what she wants from her future. There were also a few other serious issues covered throughout the story but these were done in a very sensitive way.

The one thing Olivia McBain had wanted to do since she was a child was to be involved in the world of fashion. At twenty eight years old she was living her dream. She was working in New York at the House of world famous designer Nina Picarro, and witnessing her own designs brought to life and paraded on the catwalk.

Olivia and her brother, Kerr, were born into a noble Scottish clan, and Olivia’s parents had indulged her in her choice of career believing it would be short term. For her part, Olivia had no interest in Scotland’s high society or dealing with all the maintenance needed for Drumblair Castle. In any case, Kerr was the eldest and next in line to inherit the castle and all that went with it.

A devastating phone call from her brother brings Olivia rushing back to Scotland and changes her life in ways she had never imagined.

I liked Olivia but she did annoy me slightly when she kept second guessing herself and, despite the fact she was adamant she’d only marry for love, seemed content to settle for the easy option. On the whole there was a lovely cast of characters, particularly Mirren, Dougie and Innes, and of course Brodie, Olivia’s childhood friend until they fell out. Kerr was horrible and I did think the relationship between him and Olivia was a little too easily resolved after his attitude and the way he behaved.

Having said that, Coming Home to the Highlands is a charming and enjoyable read, the setting is wonderful and described vividly and dogs are always a winner for me. Difficult and pertinent topics such as violence, relationships, grief and abuse are dealt with sensitively.

I quite enjoyed this book but felt the ending was disjointed as I felt that Kerr would put a greater spanner in the works.
The writing was great and the settings were beautifully written. This felt more like a Christmas book and I would happily read over a glass of baileys with the fairy lights twinkling.
I loved Liv’s relationship with her friends and family. The slow burn love story of Mirren and Dougie too. Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Enjoyable romance read set in the Highlands.

Olivia is a successful woman working in the States, home due to family matters. She came across as a woman with a dream job, supportive friends and a good heart.

Brodie, brooding, talented, strong, I imagined him with dark hair and a chiselled body - from all the gardening work.

I liked the setting, and the realism of the only way to upkeep her home is by making money from it.

This is a romance so things fall into place eventually, and some things were easy to guess.

3.5 enjoyable visit to the Highland stars

Coming Home to the Highlands was a super fast-paced and cozy read. Nothing tickles my fancy like a romance set in Scotland. Throw in a little courtly intrigue? Count me in!!!

I would recommend this book to anyone who absolutely loves Bridgerton and Downton Abbey, but are interested in a modern take on it. Be warned that there are parts in the book that describe domestic violence. Certain parts may be triggering. If that doesn't bother you, then this is the perfect childhood bully-turned good guy romance for you!

This book lives up to those expectations. The main character, Olivia McBain, never expected to be the proprietor of the ancestral seat of Clan MacBain. That job was to go to the first born, her narcissistic and dastardly brother Kerr. No, Olivia was well on her way to becoming the first assistant in a famous NYC fashion house, making her way on her own two feet. That is until her mother's unexpected death brings her back to Drumblair Castle with several heavy decisions to make. Of course, her first unrequited love interest, Brodie, has also been brought back to help out his father and the gardening staff. Olivia is tasked with restoring the castle to it's former glory with her old crush turned bully. She is propositioned by another member of society, but will her stubborn heart allow her to let go of the past? You'll just have to read and find out!

I enjoyed the brevity of this book. Although it was on the shorter side, I don't think it lacked in any details. I didn't necessarily like the ending, I thought it could have been extended. I think the author has left good space to continue the story as a series. Which, PLEASE DO. I would go feral to see how Olivia juggles managing the castle and her fashion career. I also wouldn't say no to a Bella spin-off, I'm dying to find out who her mystery man is!

I've read other books by Lisa Hobman and enjoyed them so I was looking forward to this one. The premise is intriguing and who doesn't love a Scottish castle, right? Unfortunately, this one fell a little short of my expectations. That's not to say I didn't like it. I did. But I really wanted to love it.

The setting of the book is wonderful. Hobman really brings Liv's family's castle to life. I could easily envision both the castle and the grounds as I was reading. The characters are also brought to life, some very appealing and others not so much. The author gives several of them interesting layers, complex life issues, and secrets. In fact, she uses them to introduce some very weighty and relatable topics, begging to be explored more fully, and with one character, an issue that isn't talked about enough (in my opinion).

The biggest fly in the ointment for me was Liv's brother, Kerr. He's a self-centered, entitled, egomaniacal jerk who treats his sister with careless disregard at his best and outright cruelty at his worst. This goes on for the vast majority of the book until there's an inexplicable change - an abrupt, unexpected change of course that I didn't buy for a moment. It felt contrived and unrealistic and didn't leave me with the feel-good moment I'm pretty sure the author was hoping for.

I liked Liv. My heart ached for her - for the grief that was breaking her heart, the tug of war between her loyalty to family and her passion for her career. I loved her relationships with her childhood pals in Scotland, her roommate in NYC, her mother's dog, and her boss. Everyone should be lucky enough to have a boss like Liv's. I was cheering for her to find her happy ending even while shaking my head at the choices she made in direct opposition to what she had always adamantly said she wanted. And for an intelligent woman, how did she not clue in to what was so glaringly obvious?

The book ends on a high note with a happy ending for more than one couple. But I still don't trust Liv's brother.

3.5 stars
ARC received for fair and unbiased review

Olivia always dreamt of leaving her ancient homestead of Drumblair Castle in Scotland and striking out into the world of fashion. As the youngest child of the MacBain clan, responsibility for the Castle will eventually fall to her brother Kerr, leaving her free chase her dreams.

Now 28, she's spent several years working for a top fashion house in New York and loves her life. That is, until a shocking call from her brother brings her home and throws her future into turmoil. Can she make Scotland her home once more? Or will she head back to the dream life she'd built for herself?

Although there were several romances within this book, this was primarily a story about family (both biological and found), duty and the determination of a young woman to do the best she can. Olivia was lucky enough to be able to live out her dreams and I was glad that when duty called, she didn't simply give it all up without a second thought.

I love a friends to lovers romance, although it remained up in the air until the final chapter of the book. I enjoyed that there were two childhood friends who appeared as suitors, but did guess each of the twists before they were announced. Ultimately, I really enjoyed this book and will happily read more of the Author's work.

Thank you to Author Lisa Hobman, Netgalley & Boldwood Books for providing me with this ARC. This review was written willingly and all opinions are my own. The book is available now and I recommend you grab a copy 💕

Olivia is loving her life as a fashion designer in New York and feels certain that she can continue to have the best of both worlds with periodic returns to the family’s ancestral home in Scotland. But the sudden death of her mother and unexpected provisions in the will turn her world upside down.

I love a book set in Scotland, and I love it even more if it’s in the Highlands. This book follows Liv, born to the Laird and Lady of the MacBain clan, after her brother Kerr, the heir. She left home to pursue fashion design in New York. Her entire life changes when she gets an unexpected phone call, and she immediately heads back to Scotland.

This book was brimming with the ins and outs of castle life, beautiful Scottish scenery, family drama, and a childhood friends to lovers trope. There is spousal abuse off page, and I thought it was wonderfully done.

Even though the plot moves well, and there are always many things happening at once, this book manages to highlight the growth that Liv goes through when her world is turned upside down. I really appreciated it because that is what happens in life.

Shoutout to the 2 adorable pups. I just love a good dog sidekick.

A story full of surprises - and romances,
With changes galore and different chances.
Drumblair Castle is the ancestral home of MacBain Clan
And in her will Olivia and Kerr's mum has a shocking plan!

Fashion designer, Olivia, is following her dreams
Working in New York, successfully it seems.
Then the call from Kerr tells her their Mum had died
So home she quickly flies.

Meeting old friends, reconnecting with others, too,
Olivia is faced with challenging things to do.
Will this be the start of a new dream
Or the end to them now it could mean.

Childhood memories and teenage angst,
New romances and second chances
Obstacles, problems, adversaries and more
Along with new possibilities are there to explore.

A heartwarming read full of twists and turns
As the truth between others she slowly learns.
Engagements, weddings, new beginnings, too,
But read it for yourself to see with just who!

A story I thoroughly enjoyed right from the start,
As Olivia decides just how to follow her heart!
For my complementary copy, say thank you,
As I share with you this, my honest review

My Review: I really enjoy books by Lisa Hobman and I loved this book too. We follow Olivia who lives a glitzy life. Her brother Kerr is a little obnoxious and entitled. Sadly, their mother Lady Freya passes away and their lives are turned upside down. Grief is a very personal thing, I also think I am the only human on the planet that hasn't seen Love, Actually. There are some gorgeous dogs in this book. I loved the will reading part in the book. I couldn't get She's a Lady and Every Little Thing She Does is Magic out of my head. I smiled broadly when I got to the characters FiFi and Fiona. Don't worry, there's love, drama, friendship and change to be found too. Well Done Lisa, a fully recommended read.

A feel good easy read well worth your time.. The story is sweet and uncomplicated without any surprising twists or turns that I kept expecting.

So, I didn’t really like this as much as I thought I would, I loved it even more than I anticipated I would ! The author’s writing style is fabulous, just like the story it’s funny and light-hearted. I love the fact Liv is living her dream before she comes home to where she is actually living my dream (although I love NYC I don’t think I could live there) how can you beat the community that Lisa writes in her books.

I found the relationship with her brother interesting, with them being at each other’s all the time, having two brothers myself and knowing how we are at times, I can see this being realistic, although I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry as these, although the resolution was a little swift for my liking, to be fair in reality, my brothers I know will often sort things quickly and move on, they tend to not react like me , so yeah it’s realistic . Sometimes get what they deserve, other times not, but no spoilers.

I love Scotland so much, so I can 100 % confirm the descriptions are perfect, just like being there yourself, Lisa’s writing makes me want to book a hotel and train and go right back again, to be honest if working and needing pay wasn’t an issue I’d move up there tomorrow and never leave. Even more so if I could go live in the community Liv gets to be in, it’s just my idea of heaven. So if like me you need an escape to your own personal heaven from time to time, you can’t go wrong reading this or any of Lisa’s books, they are full of joy, love, hope and yes sadness at points, but you will be left happier by the end.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.