This book was unique to the romance books I usually read. There wasn't a bad guy or major event that had to be overcome for the characters to come together. The story is more of an example of what kindness can do and the ripple affect it can have on an entire community. It was a sweet story. It also a historical fiction, which I am fond of. I learned about the after math of England's war with France (Napoleon) and a genocide that took place in Scotland when highland people were forced out, their homes burned to the ground so that their leader could raise sheep on their land. It seems there is always more history to learn.

Carla Kelly is an auto-buy author for me. She reminds me a little bit of a modern day Jane Austen but with a tad more bite; sweet but with a dose of pepper. I am not sure there is even a mediocre book among her backlist much less a poor one. Her latest novel is another winner and I am sure Kelly fans will not be disappointed. This fan certainly was not.

Captain Douglas Bowden is selling out of the British Royal Navy at the end of the war against Napoleon. He is thirty-seven years old and has known practically nothing but the swaying of a ship for twenty-odd years. While the Navy wants him to stay on as a naval surgeon, Douglas just wants a quiet home somewhere where he cannot see or smell the sea, and can make a decent living practicing surgery. As he sets out to find a home, he heads north and eventually finds himself in Scotland. Inland stops along the way convince Douglas that he does indeed need the sea close by and when the coach stops in a small coastal town it serves only to strengthen that conviction. With the coach come barely to a stop for a quick bite and to refresh the horses, Douglas is met with the sight of a small boy with a broken and bleeding leg. What is a surgeon to do? Why, stay and assist of course.

The small town of Edgar has a tea room run by Miss Olive Grant, and it is to this establishment that Douglas brings the injured child. Olive is the daughter of the deceased rector of Edgar and Miss Grant’s Tea Room serves as a kind of hub for the downtrodden community. The war has taken Edgar’s once thriving ship-building industry and moved it to a different location, and the Highland Clearances impacted the town as well as the native highlanders who were thrown out of their homes and dumped along the coastline. Edgar has its share of highlanders who have not been integrated into the community and are slowly starving to death. Olive is using her meager inheritance to help where she can.

With the sound of cannonfire still ringing in his ears and the memories of all the men he could not save from war haunting his dreams, Douglas is suffering. His decades of war, blood and gore have made him older than his years and all he wants is to live out his life with some degree of calm and quiet. Because of his profession, he cannot get rid of the blood, but perhaps he can find the calm and quiet. Douglas is just an exquisite character. Suffering from PTSD, he means to soldier on but he cannot always control his flashbacks. He is outwardly stoic, but inwardly suffering to such a degree it is hard to understand how he makes it through each day. There is such a sense of vulnerability that the reader wants to help him recover. It is no wonder that Olive Grant wants to as well. The slow building of their friendship and then relationship is both poignant and entirely believable. Slowly but surely, Douglas becomes a part of the community, and though he is determined to find his quiet little home, Edgar doesn’t want to let him go. You see Edgar is suffering from a type of PTSD itself and needs the healing hands and heart of a surgeon.

Kelly does an excellent job of showing the aftermath of war and the devastation of the Highland Clearances, which was a war within itself. It is against this backdrop that the love story of Douglas and Olive is allowed to bloom. Both are filled with a sense of duty; Olive from her rector father and Douglas from serving his country. Both are somewhat overwhelmed by where their duties have taken them and we see these shared traits give both of them hope for a future. Olive and Douglas are intricately drawn and sympathetic characters. I love that Carla Kelly creates heroes and heroines from everyday people just trying to get through life as best they can and turns them into memorable characters. Doing No Harm is another DIK in a long list of them.

2.5

Kelly's take on the Scottish highland removals focuses less on the Highlanders themselves and more on a village of poor lowlanders upon whom a group of highlanders are foisted, and on their slow learning the necessity of being charitable to "outsiders." The lesson is learned through the selfless work of the romance's two protagonists: Olive Grant, a lowland Scot, who has been spending her small inheritance feeding the destitute of her town; and Douglas Bowden, a former navy surgeon who is looking for a peaceful village far from the sea where he can forget the horrors of war. Whilst searching for said village, Douglas ends detained in the seaside Scottish town of Edgar, tending to a small boy's badly broken leg. And then he stays, and stays, and stays, as the townspeople's medical problems, and the kindly Olive, engross his attention. The example of their selfless charity inspires other townspeople; their plans to help alleviate the highlanders' poverty start small, but as a determined Highland girl joins their campaign, both lowlanders and highlanders begin to work together to make Edgar a more prosperous place.

This is all to say that I enjoyed the story, and the characters, but was uncomfortable with the book's ideological underpinnings: Exercising Christian charity, rather than working for political change, is the solution to social problems. I also felt uncomfortable with the wealth of crying at/about others' trauma—made me remember workshops on race that I've attended, where POC have talked about having to deal not only with the trauma of racism, but the tears of white people who are upset by hearing about said trauma. Interestingly, the two villains of the piece—a Highland man who used alcohol and his fists against his family to exercise his trauma, and an English widow of a butcher who earned a knighthood by lending money to the Prince of Wales, money he earned from investing in slaving—are both redeemed. The latter especially made me feel gross, because Lady Telford's money is ultimately used to revivify the Scottish town. It's hard to cheer the town's, and the displaced Highlanders', recovery, knowing that they came at the even greater trauma of African enslavement.

Sweet romance with tons of historical detail. On the one hand I appreciate that Kelly doesn’t flinch away from some of the less savory aspects of history - the Highland clearances play a huge role in the story and are pretty graphically described (at one point a small child engaging in impromptu art therapy draws a picture of her mother being raped by an English soldier); the local gentry admits to making her money investing in the slave trade - while on the other hand I feel, as always in her books, she rushes to forgiveness too quickly. A violent, alcoholic husband and father is forgiven after he relays his story of trauma and loss in the Highland clearances; the hero of the book is briefly disapproving of Lady Telford for making her money in the slave trade but after that brief paragraph (of thought, not words) lets the subject, and his disapproval, drop. The emphasis over all is far more on the healing of the (fictional) town of Edgar than on the romance, so if you're looking for a hero and heroine compellingly drawn together, check out one of Kelly's other romances.

Get your laughter and kleenex ready. There's lots of emotion in this one. Also some Scottish history. Interesting. Yet, very disturbing. It's amazing how badly humans can treat other humans

I'm a sucker for a feel good, improve things around you kind of story. Everything may tie up a little too neatly in ways, but it's not without struggle and hardship. Definitely worth reading.

It took me 3 times starting this book to actually get into the story and finish it. Once I read enough to get interested, I liked it. I loved seeing the town evolve

Not one of my favorite Kelly novels. I think I would have liked more from Olive's point of view. Not a bad book, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it.

I found this book really touching. Many moments were bittersweet—it focuses on the consequences of the Scottish clearances in a way I’ve never processed before and that was tough—but there was such a lovely care and kindness in the main characters as the retired navy surgeon endeavors to bind up wounds both physical and emotional and the tearoom owner endeavors to feed half the village on her small inheritance. It also does the lovely thing in romance where community is built and fostered.
It is also sweet/clean for those interested, no heat, but as I said, very touching. I did in fact cry. Four stars.