Under Loch and Key Summary, Characters and Themes
Under Loch and Key by Lana Ferguson is a romantic fantasy that blends emotional depth, family legacies, and mythic transformation in a scenic Scottish setting. At its heart, the novel follows Keyanna, a grieving American woman who arrives in a remote Scottish village to scatter her father’s ashes—and unexpectedly finds herself entangled with local feuds, magical curses, and a man who might not be entirely human.
With witty banter, heartfelt introspection, and an evolving romance, the story explores how personal loss can lead to connection, healing, and self-discovery, all against the backdrop of lochs, legends, and long-buried secrets.
Summary
Keyanna MacKay, an American woman grieving the recent death of her father, travels to the remote Scottish town of Greerloch to fulfill his final wish: to scatter his ashes at the mysterious Skallangal Cove. Her journey begins on a comically chaotic note when her rental car breaks down amid a flock of sheep, where she meets a helpful local named Hamish.
Soon after, she finds herself face-to-face with a standoffish yet striking man named Lachlan Greer, who catches her trespassing on his land. Their first meeting is tense—her intentions are sentimental, while his demeanor is curt and guarded.
Key’s arrival in Greerloch is not well received by her estranged grandmother, Rhona MacKay, who greets her with cold hostility, blaming her for reopening past wounds linked to her father’s departure. Rhona’s husband Finlay, however, warmly welcomes Key, offering her a place on their farm as long as she contributes.
Despite Rhona’s frosty treatment, Key finds moments of comfort in Finlay’s kindness and gradually builds a tentative relationship with her cousin Brodie, who provides her with a tour of the village and a glimpse into her family’s legacy.
Lachlan and Key cross paths repeatedly, their banter sharp and their chemistry undeniable. Key learns that Lachlan is deeply entangled in the town’s history, as well as in a longstanding feud between the Greers and MacKays.
The tension between them grows more complicated when, during an emotionally charged visit to the cove, Key slips into the water and is saved by a mysterious beast. She later discovers that the “monster” who saved her was Lachlan himself—cursed to become the Loch Ness Monster each night due to an ancient spell placed on his bloodline by a kelpie witch.
The revelation of Lachlan’s secret changes everything. Though he initially tries to conceal the truth, Key proves unshakable in her belief and support.
Their relationship shifts from enemies to reluctant allies, and then to something deeper. Lachlan fears hurting her, both emotionally and physically, but she continues to trust him—even when his monstrous form emerges at inopportune moments.
Together, they begin to explore the curse, searching for a way to break it while navigating their growing feelings.
Key’s determination intensifies when she learns about the existence of a magical bridle that could potentially sever the curse. As she digs deeper into her family’s history and the connection between the MacKays and Greers, she uncovers secrets long buried—ones that tie her lineage to Lachlan’s fate.
Meanwhile, Lachlan wrestles with guilt and fear, unsure if love can truly undo what centuries of magic have done.
Their bond grows stronger, tested by both the supernatural and familial divisions. Lachlan reveals his past, the tragic loss of his father to the loch’s waters, and his fear of becoming something unlovable.
In response, Key opens her heart, offering not only love but belief in a future that doesn’t end in isolation or despair. The two become lovers, and their emotional connection is deepened by shared vulnerabilities and the growing realization that Key may be the key to breaking the curse.
The tension reaches a peak when Brodie, once a potential ally, reveals his darker motivations. Obsessed with proving himself to his father and the legacy of their family, he kidnaps Lachlan and confronts Keyanna with an old journal revealing the truth of the curse and Lachlan’s role in her journey.
Brodie believes Lachlan manipulated her into retrieving the bridle. In a violent confrontation, Key uses her latent magic—awakened through her connection to Lachlan and her bloodline—to set Brodie ablaze.
The bridle is destroyed, but Key discovers that she doesn’t need it to break the curse.
Through sheer will, forgiveness, and the power of love, Key heals Lachlan and lifts the curse that has haunted his family for generations. Her forgiveness and belief in his humanity allow the transformation to end, and Lachlan is finally free.
The moment is solidified when they return to the loch and witness the miraculous return of Lachlan’s long-lost father, also cured and fully human after 26 years. The encounter bridges generations of loss and brings closure to a story rooted in sorrow and mystery.
In the aftermath, Lachlan and Keyanna adjust to life together, their relationship strengthened by everything they’ve endured. Brodie, broken and remorseful, is institutionalized after his breakdown.
The couple discusses healing family wounds and look toward a future not bound by curses or regrets. Lachlan suggests she stay in Scotland, and Key agrees, recognizing the place as her home and the people as her family.
Key makes peace with Rhona by presenting her with Tavish’s journal and a heartfelt letter. Rhona, moved by the gesture, apologizes and promises to do better.
The family, once fractured by silence and blame, begins to heal. Time passes, and four years later, Lachlan and Key are married with a young daughter named Sorcha.
Their home is filled with laughter, magic, and unity. Sorcha shows early signs of magical ability, a living symbol of their union and the legacy they’ve rewritten.
The novel ends on a note of warmth and closure. The curse is broken, old wounds are on their way to mending, and the once lonely and conflicted characters have built a life of love and purpose together.
Under Loch and Key becomes a story not just about myth or romance, but about the transformative power of choice, belief, and forgiveness.
Characters
Keyanna “Key” MacKay
Keyanna is the emotional anchor of Under Loch and Key, a complex character whose journey is rooted in loss, identity, and rediscovery. Arriving in Greerloch to honor her father’s dying wish, Key enters the story bearing emotional scars—grieving a father who wove fantastical tales of the Loch Ness monster and carrying the baggage of familial estrangement.
Key is portrayed as brash, humorous, and bold, using sarcasm as a shield against vulnerability. Her American sensibilities set her apart in the reserved Scottish village, making her a cultural outsider.
But this contrast also underlines her resilience and adaptability. She begins her stay with a sense of mission but gradually becomes enmeshed in local life, forming tentative relationships with her grandparents and reawakening latent magical abilities that tie her to the land and its legends.
Her relationship with Lachlan reveals a deeper layer of Key—one that seeks connection, healing, and truth. The dynamic between them evolves from antagonism to profound trust, especially as she confronts her own magical inheritance and becomes the catalyst for Lachlan’s salvation.
Key’s arc is ultimately one of transformation—not only does she embrace her magical lineage and emotional vulnerability, but she also finds belonging and builds a new legacy in the land of her ancestors.
Lachlan Greer
Lachlan is a brooding, haunted figure whose identity is quite literally split between man and myth. Initially presented as guarded and gruff, he is burdened by an ancient family curse that transforms him into the Loch Ness monster, a fate he has spent his life fearing and fighting.
Lachlan’s emotional landscape is marked by solitude, shame, and resignation. He views himself as dangerous and unworthy of love, particularly due to a prophecy linking his downfall to a MacKay woman.
His relationship with Keyanna destabilizes this narrative; her fierce curiosity, empathy, and eventual love pierce his emotional armor. Lachlan is reluctant to trust, but his slow unraveling is both painful and beautiful to witness.
His physical transformation mirrors his internal one—he moves from hiding in the shadows of his beastly alter ego to reclaiming his humanity. The love he finds with Keyanna is not just romantic; it is redemptive.
Lachlan’s greatest fear becomes his salvation through vulnerability and belief in the seemingly impossible. His reunion with his father and the mending of familial rifts further symbolize his full emergence from cursed isolation into a life of connection and purpose.
Rhona MacKay
Rhona, Keyanna’s grandmother, embodies the cold rigidity of generational pain and unhealed wounds. When Key arrives, Rhona greets her not with warmth, but rejection, still bitter over her son Duncan’s decision to leave and the lingering wounds of familial discord.
Rhona’s harshness stems from fear—fear of losing more, fear of opening up old scars, and fear of admitting her own role in the rupture. Her character is steeped in regret and pride, and her arc is subtle but powerful.
Over time, Rhona’s icy demeanor begins to thaw as she’s confronted with undeniable truths: Keyanna’s strength, Duncan’s legacy, and her own need for forgiveness. By the end of the story, Rhona’s acceptance of Keyanna is not only a reconciliation with her granddaughter, but a quiet act of redemption for the mistakes she made with Duncan.
Her pledge to be better underscores the novel’s broader themes of healing, intergenerational trauma, and the courage to begin again.
Finlay MacKay
Finlay is the emotional counterweight to Rhona’s bitterness. He is open-hearted, supportive, and immediately accepting of Keyanna, offering her a sense of family and security from the moment she steps onto the farm.
His character is emblematic of warmth and reconciliation—someone who has chosen compassion over pride. Finlay’s encouragement and unwavering love become a source of strength for Keyanna, and his role in bridging the family’s emotional divide is quiet but essential.
He is also a reminder that kindness can be a form of resistance to pain and that the door to family is never truly closed. His actions throughout the story model the kind of love that heals rather than harms, and his presence helps Keyanna find grounding amidst grief and uncertainty.
Brodie MacKay
Brodie begins as an affable cousin, offering Keyanna a glimpse into the softer side of her family. But as the story unfolds, his character reveals an insidious complexity.
Brodie’s jealousy, emotional instability, and deep-seated need for validation gradually transform him from awkward kin into a tragic antagonist. His obsession with the bridle—a magical artifact capable of controlling or breaking the Loch Ness curse—mirrors his desperate desire for power and recognition, particularly in the shadow of his father’s admiration for Lachlan.
Brodie’s descent culminates in betrayal, violence, and madness, but it’s not devoid of pathos. His breakdown and institutionalization underscore the cost of unresolved pain and familial neglect.
Though he is ultimately a danger to those around him, his character remains deeply human—flawed, desperate, and broken by forces he could never fully understand or control.
Duncan MacKay
Though deceased before the story begins, Duncan’s presence is felt throughout as a guiding spirit and emotional touchstone. His tales of the Loch, his belief in magic, and his complicated past with both Rhona and the village are the catalysts for Keyanna’s journey.
Through memories, journals, and revelations, Duncan becomes a symbol of the bridge between worlds—the magical and the mundane, the past and the present, the estranged and the reconciled. His legacy is ultimately redeemed through Keyanna’s love and actions, and his final wish brings about not just closure, but a new beginning for his daughter and the family he left behind.
Lachlan’s Father
Lachlan’s father is the silent hope at the heart of Lachlan’s story, presumed lost to the curse but eventually revealed to have survived, transformed and hidden for decades. His return near the story’s conclusion is both miraculous and emotionally devastating.
Their reunion is a reckoning—for time lost, for love withheld, and for the resilience required to endure. His acceptance of Keyanna and his presence at Sorcha’s birthday in the epilogue signal the full-circle healing of a family long broken by myth and fear.
He is a symbol of endurance and of the possibility of return, even after the darkest transformations.
Sorcha
Sorcha, Lachlan and Keyanna’s daughter, is the embodiment of the novel’s central themes: legacy, magic, love, and hope. Though a child, her magical abilities and mixed heritage mark her as a new beginning.
Sorcha represents a future unburdened by the shame and fear that plagued her parents and ancestors. Her presence is a quiet but powerful reminder that love can rewrite old stories and that children born of love and forgiveness can transcend even the oldest curses.
Through her, the novel ends not just with closure, but with promise.
Themes
Intergenerational Trauma and Forgiveness
The narrative in Under Loch and Key is rooted in the emotional residue left by fractured family relationships that stretch across decades. Keyanna arrives in Greerloch not only to honor her father’s memory but also to confront a legacy of silence and blame.
Her grandmother Rhona, emblematic of old wounds and harsh judgments, greets her return with coldness and guilt-laden scorn, reinforcing the emotional barricades built over time. The resentment Rhona holds toward her late son, Duncan, is displaced onto Keyanna, who becomes an unwitting representative of a past Rhona has refused to reconcile.
The pain of abandonment, perceived betrayal, and lost potential is palpable in these interactions, with Rhona’s icy demeanor clashing against Keyanna’s aching need for belonging and acknowledgment. Meanwhile, Finlay’s unconditional acceptance highlights how compassion can coexist with generational hurt, serving as a counterbalance to Rhona’s rejection.
Lachlan’s journey is similarly framed by inherited pain—his curse stems not only from supernatural mythology but also from the emotional void left by his missing father and his mother’s absence. The Greers and MacKays carry centuries of mythic hostility, making personal reconciliation seem almost impossible.
Yet as Keyanna pieces together her family’s broken history and refuses to perpetuate cycles of blame, she becomes the catalyst for healing. Her decision to confront Rhona with compassion, to share Tavish’s journal, and to offer forgiveness to both her grandmother and Lachlan allows entrenched pain to give way to grace.
The ultimate reunion of Lachlan with his father, and the warm acceptance of Keyanna into both family lines, solidifies the message that generational pain can be mended not through vengeance or denial, but through vulnerability, truth-telling, and the courage to choose empathy.
Identity, Legacy, and Inheritance
At the core of Keyanna’s narrative is a confrontation with identity—both personal and ancestral. Raised in America and distanced from her Scottish roots, she carries only her father’s half-told stories and fantastical memories.
His tales of being saved by the Loch Ness monster blur the line between myth and reality, casting a long shadow over Keyanna’s understanding of who he was and, by extension, who she is. Her journey to Greerloch is as much about physical travel as it is about emotional excavation.
She seeks clarity: about her father’s exile, her family’s reputation, and her place within it all. But instead of finding neat answers, she unearths legacies layered with secrets, curses, and bloodlines that stretch into the mystical.
Lachlan’s struggle is similarly rooted in a fraught legacy. As a Greer, he has inherited not just farmland but a supernatural curse, handed down through generations.
This legacy defines him physically and psychologically, determining how he moves through the world, relates to others, and sees himself. The bridle, the kelpie myth, and his monstrous transformation are not just symbolic—they are tangible burdens that he cannot escape.
He fears becoming what his lineage has always warned against, and worse, he fears involving Keyanna in a fate she never asked to inherit. Yet it is her very connection to that legacy—through Tavish, through Duncan, through her magical awakening—that becomes the key to breaking the cycle.
In healing him, she not only reclaims her family’s power but redefines what inheritance means: not a burden to carry in silence, but a story to reshape through choice and love.
The Transformative Power of Love and Intimacy
Love in Under Loch and Key is not framed as instantaneous or uncomplicated; it emerges through friction, resistance, and ultimately, surrender. The relationship between Lachlan and Keyanna begins in confrontation, evolves through reluctant cooperation, and crystallizes during moments of physical and emotional intimacy that strip away the defenses both have clung to.
Their romance is marked not by idealization but by honesty—Keyanna challenges Lachlan’s dismissiveness, and Lachlan confronts Keyanna’s guarded grief. Their sexual union is not a mere plot device but a crucible in which both characters expose their deepest fears and desires.
Lachlan’s panic over harming her, paired with Keyanna’s steady reassurance, is symbolic of their entire dynamic: one partner terrified of his darkness, the other unafraid to reach into it with light.
The intimacy they share becomes a source of strength, anchoring them against external threats and internal doubt. It softens Lachlan’s self-loathing, gives Keyanna a place to land after years of emotional rootlessness, and provides both with a sense of safety they have long been denied.
The physical manifestation of their bond—culminating in supernatural surges of power—is a testament to how deeply intertwined their emotional and magical selves have become. Even when facing Brodie’s betrayal, a ruined bridle, and the looming possibility of death, their love becomes an act of defiance and salvation.
Keyanna’s final act of healing Lachlan through love and magic is not just romantic; it is revolutionary. It signals a love that does not require perfection, only presence, and one that remakes not just two lives but an entire family’s fate.
Myth, Magic, and the Blurred Line Between Fantasy and Reality
The setting of Greerloch, nestled beside the legendary Loch Ness, is not just a backdrop but a participant in the story. From the moment Keyanna arrives, the air is thick with legend, from the fantastical sheep stampede to the whispered stories of kelpie curses and mystical bridles.
Her father’s whimsical tales, once dismissed as dementia-tinged fictions, slowly reveal themselves to be part of a larger truth hidden beneath the surface of rural normalcy. As Keyanna ventures deeper into these mysteries—first at Skallangal Cove, then through ancient journals, and finally through magical confrontation—she begins to see that the boundary between legend and life is far more porous than she imagined.
Lachlan’s transformation into the Loch Ness Monster is treated with both awe and sorrow. It is not a power he wields with pride but a curse he fears, an embodiment of otherness that isolates him.
His duality—man and beast, lover and threat—mirrors the dual nature of the myths that shaped the region. The supernatural elements in the story are not allegorical; they are real and dangerous, but also ripe with potential for healing and rebirth.
When Keyanna awakens her own magical abilities, the narrative makes a profound claim: that magic is not the stuff of ancient tales but of personal truth, emotion, and will. The monster is not just in the loch; it’s in the stories we carry, the fears we inherit, and the legacies we must confront.
In breaking the curse through love and inner power, Keyanna and Lachlan do more than resolve a mystery—they prove that myths are not constraints, but doorways to transformation.
Belonging, Homecoming, and Found Family
From the outset, Keyanna is a woman out of place—culturally, geographically, and emotionally. Her arrival in Greerloch is marked by suspicion, judgment, and a lack of welcome from her own kin.
Yet through persistent effort, emotional honesty, and acts of service, she gradually builds connections that redefine what family and home mean. Her relationship with Finlay provides early warmth and validation, contrasting sharply with Rhona’s rejection.
Over time, even Rhona begins to soften, prompted by Keyanna’s open-hearted gestures and the presentation of her ancestor’s journal. This journey from outsider to insider is not linear or easy, but it is powerful.
Keyanna finds that home is not a static location or a group bound by blood—it is a space built through mutual care, hard-won trust, and shared purpose.
Lachlan’s journey parallels hers in many ways. Despite being a lifelong resident, he is also an outsider due to his secret, his lineage, and his reluctance to engage with village life.
Through Keyanna, he reclaims not only his humanity but his community—reentering social events, reconnecting with estranged family, and envisioning a future no longer bound by isolation. Their final vision of family—complete with their daughter Sorcha, restored relationships, and a new home on ancestral land—illustrates a redefinition of belonging that includes love, legacy, and chosen connection.
The resolution isn’t just romantic; it is communal. Found family triumphs where biological family failed, and the act of choosing to stay, love, and forgive becomes the true magic that binds them all.