Read this on ebook, and it was a light, quick read!

I'd never read another Julie Garwood book before, and found her writing style in this novel to be very light (a friend called it 'whimsical'). To me, this somewhat foiled the expectations I'd had going in that there would be a lot of tension/angst surrounding the "secret" that was the title.
This story was fast paced, and had insta-love. I think one of my biggest complaints was that I felt like all the tension introduced throughout the plot was too quickly resolved: each time a problem came up, one of our main characters would solve it and save the day, usually within the chapter. I would have appreciated a little more tension pulling all the way through the storyline.
I think my favorite element is the great female friendship between our main heroine and her bff, whom she is travelling to see and to attend. I loved this portrayal of their chatter and their real love for the other, and how they strengthened each other too.

>spoiler<
Early in the book I was frustrated by the way the Scottish village was set up: the men and women totally separate in the 'government' and the women were totally ignored. This ultimately was an underlying theme of the book, how the main female character gets the council to realize that the women weren't being treated fairly and needed to be able to air their concerns to the council, same as men.
To me, this was just taken to a level of unbelievability--never in any place, especially in such a small collection of people, would the women not have a say? This was jarring next to how Patrick treated his wife--he wanted to bend over backwards for her and he was always listening to her. I think it was annoyingly unrealistic to have the women so...ignored?
Also, none of the other women were portrayed as having any friendships--even the first woman who gives birth makes a wistful comment about wishing she had a friend, and had never experienced friendship with another woman... wtf? Women (and men) across all times have been able to have friends--this main character didn't introduce this concept to these Scottish women...?
Also, the main character just swooped in, saved the day, changed the way everyone saw her, saw birthing, how the council and the laird worked together... "who me? an outsider? I'm a nobody!"
>/spoiler<
This book was light and fluffy, with low tension and all conflicts easily solved in no time. I personally didn't find the scenes with all the men around Judith (like the wedding scene) to be very funny, I found it annoying that she was like "...whuh?" and all the old men clucking like hens were chortling at how she wasn't keeping up with them.
This book was just 'fine' to me.
I may read more Garwood in the future.

Check out the live show on YouTube that was the discussion I participated in for this book! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4MD3uDh3Ys