Just how accurate is the new
Netflix Christmas film about a bestselling
New York author who buys a crumbling Scottish castle and falls for its laird? Only one woman is qualified to judge
![Tartan and tinsel: a Scottish castle-dwelling novelist on Brooke Shields’ new romcom](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3abf129c0e3b0a6d1361383aaa029e1bf7342c1b/0_0_5440_3264/master/5440.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=55c701035ece57a11eaea4dc37b86b16)
It is nice to know there are only two bicycling novelists who live in a Scottish castle, one being me and the other being Brooke Shields. (Before anyone gets too class-war-y, if you own a two-bedroom flat in any part of the south-east, it is almost certainly worth more than our crumbly old place in Fife.)
As a novelist, I write Scotland-based romances, often set at Christmas, because I love them. And every year I hope that Netflix might just option one and make it. But what have they done instead? They have only gone and made a ridiculous film about my real life.