What Scotland Taught Me by Molly Ringle

Fresh out of high school, four friends headed to Scotland, to spend the next six months in Edinburgh enjoying an adventure-filled work-abroad journey before parting ways to college. While in Edinburgh, Eva Sonneborn meets with a local bartender, Gil, who she eventually flirts with despite Tony's, her boyfriend back home in Oregon, disapproval. She figures a little flirt with Gil won't jeopardize her relationship with Tony.

However, the trip does much more not only to her, but to her friends; Shannon, Amber and Laurence as well. Shannon finds herself falls head-over-heel with a charming English student, Amber gets caught up in her relentless emotion with Laurence while going crazy over her ghost-seeing ability. As for Eva, her supposedly light flirt with Gil turned unexpectedly out of hand, as she begins to question the sincerity of their relationship.

To make matters even worse, Tony surprises her with his visit to Edinburgh right before Christmas. So, Eva is forced to hide her scandalous affair and deals with Laurence who favors her with all her secrets. As dirty things begin to unravel, Eva finds herself risk of losing all of her friends. By the end of their stay in Edinburgh, their lives are changed forever.

This is the kind of book I would to read again and again without ever getting bored. It is truly a fun read with a dollop of subtle romance, yet without being too cheesy and eye-rolling. I laughed every now and then at the humors, still I found myself sniffling with tears especially when I got to the sensitive part. The story is themed with issues every young adult like me has to deal with - work, school, personal relationship, family and friends. Eva, the main character, is probably the kind of female character we all love to hate throughout the novel. She did nearly everything a bad girl does. Ironically, I like Eva, even more than I like the sensible Shannon. She reminded me of one of my best friends, ok, maybe two. As bitchy as she might have been, she never loses her sensitivity towards her friends whenever they need her in bad times. I know there are some young women out there could relate to her. The first person narration worked really well in bringing her out to life in every reader’s mind. Other side characters are well-developed too. As a matter of fact, I literally found nobody to loathe, not even the flamboyant Shelly.

If there's one more thing that I love about What Scotland Taught Me, it would definitely be the rich setting. The backdrop was varied and outstanding, from urban nightlife to countryside. Readers would not be confined to typical young adults' hang-outs as the author had included some other famous Scottish and British landmarks in her novel. Every image of Scotland and England was penned perfectly, with minimal flaws. As Britain had some of the most haunted places on Earth, it would be rather foolish not to mention its ghost-tour. However, the author had done a remarkable job to present those haunts in her writing. Expect less goose bumps and hair-raising moments, brace for some tickles - that's all I want to say.

On the less than impressive side of the novel, I found some unnecessary bracketed lines in some chapters which I thought was a bit distracting, whereas some parts in the chapters were penned in dialogues. I had hope for more narrations to better enhance the parts. Other than that, everything was perfect.

After reading the novel, Molly Ringle had made me want to head over to Europe and experience my own foreign enlightening moment. After all, it is one of my dreams to go backpacking and travel around Europe. I would definitely recommend the novel to everyone, even to male readers, because, trust me…this is unlike any other paperback chick-lit.


Book Info

Title: What Scotland Taught me
Author: Molly Ringle
Genre: YA, Romance, Contemporary
Year Published: 2010
Publisher: ireadiwrite Publishing
Where to Buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, OmniLit

My rating
~5 stars out of 5~