This book is one of TikTok's darlings and I can absolutely see the hype. That said, I didn't enjoy this book. The heroine is very much one of those brash, arrogant, not-like-other-girls heroines, popularized by authors such as Sarah J. Maas. Books like these used to make me feel annoyed but now I get that it's just a matter of personal preference and taste. The writing is very clean and flows pretty smoothly in a way that suggests that the author knows her craft. Some YA titles are bogged down by overly ornate purple prose; this one is not. I don't hate this book, I just kept setting it down and getting bored while reading it. If you enjoy Sarah J. Maas and FOURTH WING, you'll probably love this.
I have mixed thoughts about DESTINY'S CAPTIVE. It's the final book in the Destiny trilogy, which is about the three mixed-race Yates brothers who live on a big California ranch called-- if I recall correctly-- Rancho Destino. Each book is about a different brother and this one in particular is about the youngest, Noah, who used to love the high seas until he was captured by pirates and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. When a female pirate takes his trading ship in Cuba, he vows to find her and get revenge, even if he has to venture to the ends of the earth.*
*Which is ironic, since he finds her in Florida. Which many would consider the ends of the earth, thanks to DeSatan. I mean, DeSantis.
There's a lot to like about this book. First, there aren't a lot of books where the hero is the one that's been sexually abused and is dealing with trauma, and I felt like the author did a good job showing how PTSD can manifest itself when one's guard is down, such as during sleep. I also liked how Noah and Pilar had conversations about it and also set boundaries for her safety, as well as for his own. Plus, Beverly Jenkins always centers Black history in her books, and her worlds are incredibly diverse. The heroine is Cuban with Jamaican and Spanish ancestry, and her hero is mixed-race (but is of Spanish decent).
It's always difficult to end a series because everyone expects all loose ties to be wrapped up into neat little bows. It was fun to see the other couples from previous books living their lives, and I also loved that the hero's mom, Alanza, got remarried and even got a sex scene. Normalize older people having relationships that involve sex. I also loved the cat and mouse scene between Pilar and Noah and how their first encounter results in a sword fight worthy of Zorro. HOT. When he cut the straps off her dress? *insert three flame emojis* I just wish it had gone on for longer, and that Noah hadn't just been like, "She's good with a sword? Grievance forgotten! Marriage time!" I mean, come on dude. Stop thinking with your shortsword. Use your big brain.
That said, this book had some notable flaws. The beginning was great but the middle section dragged. It felt a little too bucolic considering some of the tension between the H and the h. The Spanish in this book was also pretty bad considering that it was published by Avon and I imagine they have access to resources that would allow for a Native speaker to review the translations considering both characters are allegedly native Spanish speakers. There were incorrect pluralizations and feminine/masculine adjective confusion, one of the most notable being that Noah (one of the alleged native speakers) keeps referring to Pilar as his "pequeño pirata," when it should be pequeña since pirata is feminine. Or if he wanted to be extra endearing and cute, piratita would also work (I'm so sad the author didn't use this, as this would have been adorable). The author also made the weird choice not to put tildes over any use of "señor" or "señorita." Oh, and at one point, he refers to "reina guerraras" as the plural of "warrior queen" but this literally translate to queen warriors, as in two nouns. I think if it were correct, it should have been reinas de guerra (literally queens of war). I'm not 100% sure about this one, but I checked my translations and I think I'm right.
Also, when her friend Tomas dies, it's mentioned that his grandmother was sent to jail? Did they ever get her out of jail? Or was it just like, oh too bad granny??? I'm not sure if I missed if they got her out. #JusticeForGrannyTomas One of my friends just did a post about how sad it is when bad-ass heroines give up their life's work as soon as they get married-slash-pregnant and it kind of made me sad that Pilar was just kind of like fuck Cuba, life is sweet, instead of using her husband's money to continue to fight the good fight from afar. I mean, I get it-- war is exhausting and robs people of their lives, but it was SUCH a big part of her life before she met Noah that it kind of felt sad to see her just retire to the farm.
Overall, this was a decent wrap-up to a series that I thoroughly enjoyed, although the first book remains my favorite. This book had some great scenes but it ultimately ended up feeling like a teeny bit of a disappointment.
Have you ever read a book where even though you didn't like it,you were still charmed by the author(s)? That was me with this book. Johanna Hailey is a pseudonym used by two authors, Marcia Howl and Sharon Jarvis, who I believe were both bodice-ripper authors. They have a fun high fantasy romance series under this name called the Paradise series and it is charming and fun, but this book was-- if you pardon the mermaid pun-- a flop.
It's a shame because the premise is SO good. A pirate and a mermaid romance that sort of has a Count of Montecristo revenge plot underpinning it? That sounds so awesome. And the beginning is great. Michael Glenmorgan has watched his entire world crumble to ruin thanks to his enemies and his ex-fiancee. His father uanlived himself from the shame and he can't go back to his mother, at the risk of putting her in danger. When he's shot, Meg the mermaid pulls him from the waves. Oh my god it literally feels like Little Mermaid fanfiction.
The problem is that it's just too long and the purple prose bogs it down too much. Paradise worked where this one did not because it's a fully immersive fantasy world and the info dumping felt more charming and zany than it did boring. Both of these authors clearly have a lot of fun writing and their books have the vibe of someone who really likes unicorns and spent a lot of their formative years writing fanfiction. Which, OBVIOUSLY, I approve of. And it works in some of their other books but not in this one, which is a shame because it was quite hard to hunt a copy of this one down.
I might come back to this another time but probably not. I skimmed a little and it seemed boring. RIP.
I realized something about myself today. I like pirate romances, but I don't like goofy pirate romances. Catherine Hart really tested my patience with SPLENDOR and this one was even worse, because at least SPLENDOR had a curse hanging over the hero's head like the sword of Damocles to sort of draw out the tension and provide some stakes.
Cliff's notes edition of what I did read:
-Hero is a blockade runner who liberates Americans from the Evil British -Heroine wears glasses but we're told how much prettier she is without them -Hero drives his ship alllll the way to the U.S. just because he read the Georgian equivalent of a BuzzFeed article talking about, idk, 11 Reasons the Sea Wolf Is the Most Misunderstood Pirate, Actually -Heroine basically thinks the hero is a pirate strippergram (but make it PG) that her brother sent over to fuck with her
SEA OF RUIN has been on my radar since it came out because I kind of have a soft spot for old school pirate romances and the cover design had a decidedly retro bent to it, like the author (and the artist, obvi) was trying to pay homage to the bodice-rippers of yore. As someone who loves the bodice-rippers of yore, I was super into that. And the only thing better than reading a modern day throwback is conning several of your friends to read it with you, so thanks to Rebecca, Aaliyah, and Koistyfishy for joining me on this "sea of ruin."
The book is written in first person and has a very melodramatic, breathless style to the narration that reminded me a lot of Natasha Peters's works, a bodice-ripper author from the '70s and '80s who wrote books in the first person that followed a heroine over the years as she grew up and was shaped by the chaotic elements in her life. Specifically, this reminded me of SAVAGE SURRENDER, which also had a bratty heroine who was kind of kick-butt and a toxic romance with a dangerous, obsessive hero who was not to be crossed.
Was this a perfect book? No, but there was a lot to like about it. It seemed really well-researched and I loved the scenery, the fight scenes, the descriptions of the taverns and the ships. All of it was quite nicely done and added a lot to the story. I also liked Bennett, even though she was a bit of a Mary Sue. She suffered as most authors don't let their precious Sues suffer, and I think this kept her from feeling too two-dimensional. There were several scenes in this book that were very hard to read, involving death, torture, tragedy, and rape, which definitely gave this book more of an old skool flavor.
I'm not usually into M/F/M books but I liked that element in this book, too. The idea of a love triangle between a female pirate captain and her pirate husband and a pirate hunter was intriguing to me. They also all had chemistry, which is, I imagine, hard to do. I also liked that the men had distinctly different personalities, even though they were both incredibly dangerous. Priest is fire and impulsivity and filled with animal passions, whereas Ashley is more of a cold and icy type with a frozen maelstrom underneath. They also cracked me up. Priest's orange allergy leads to not one but TWO rather convenient exercises to further the plot, and can we not forget Ashley's midnight self-pleasuring sessions on the balcony of his ship? SO. DRAMATIC. How did the author come up with this stuff?
If you're not into dark romances or the politically incorrect bodice-rippers of olde, I would not recommend SEA OF RUIN. Actually, I would not recommend SEA OF RUIN for a lot of reasons, because I feel like it embodies a lot of the tropes that romance novels of the present day are trying frantically to distance themselves from. But that's kind of messy, because for a lot of people, Kathleen Woodiwiss and Christine Monson and Johanna Lindsey were the authors people cut their teeth on for the first time, so I like the idea of a bodice-ripper Renaissance written for a modern audience, but with all of the chaotic, crazy tropes that created a booming industry with some of the best cover artists around.
You be the judge, though.
P.S. Docking a half star because, like the bodice-ripper predecessors, the sex scenes in this book were too purple and went on for waaaaaay too long. Sex scenes are like red pepper flakes: I love a liberal sprinkling but please, for the love of God, don't serve me an entire PLATE of them.
When my friend Heather texted me a picture of the gorgeous stepback inside this book, I was like, "OMG, did you buy that? Do you wanna BR?" Because as it turns out, I've been craving a pirate romance for a while and this was just the thing to send me back out onto the literary high seas like a scurvy sea dog setting sail.
SPLENDOR is SUCH a weird book, though. I have read a number of pirate romances and I've never picked up anything like this, for better or for worse. Devlin is a successful and rather feared (albeit gentlemanly) pirate, but one day he and his falcon are struck by St. Elmo's fire in a storm, and faster than you can say "great balls of lightning," he and his bird both turn invisible.
Eden lives with her mother and is being courted by a schemer who wants to use her father's business for ill. He's not afraid to leverage her debts to do it too. But the answer to her problems comes in unexpected form, when pirates arrive to Charles Town, where she lives, and it turns out she's the only human alive who can see the invisible pirate Devlin in the flesh. Also, when she touches him, he briefly turns visible. WHAT.
You can imagine the kinds of shenanigans this turns up, but just in case you can't, it involves late-night schemes, fires, suspicious mothers, nosy maids, and even Blackbeard the pirate himself. It's also a bit of a makeover story because Eden starts out a tall and awkward wallflower heroine, but ends up developing confidence-- not just in her appearance but later, in her sexuality-- which was kind of refreshing because it was her inner changes that ended up making her more beautiful.
I'm giving this a 2.5 because it went on way too long. About 100 pages too long, actually. It felt like the author was just circling around to bulk up the page count. And even though the banter was cute, eventually it got a little tiresome because it felt like Eden and Devlin didn't really accomplish anything with their bickering. I like romantic fights to be emotionally constructive. This was definitely the most non-rapey pirate romance I've ever read, though. I'd recommend it to people who like happy, cutesy reads. This read like Jude Deveraux or something from the Love Spell imprint from Dorchester. I didn't hate it but it ended up being not too my taste. Don't forget to check out Heather's review, too!
When I found out that Jade Parker was the YA pen name for romance author, Lorraine Heath, I bumped this way up my to-read list. I don't normally go in for the fluffy set, but Lorraine Heath, along with Jude Deveraux, is an author who has yet to disappoint me. It would be like finding out that Lisa Kleypas had a secret line of young adult mysteries (although as far as I know, she doesn't); I'd be all over that like white on rice. You gotta support your faves.
TO CATCH A PIRATE starts off intensely. Annalisa is aboard her father's ship delivering some of King George's gold to build a board when they are attacked by pirates. Held at knifepoint, the pirate is about to steal her mother's necklace, and maybe her tongue, but he settles for her ring and a kiss-- and the king's gold.
One year later, Annalisa's father is thrown in jail for conspiring with pirates. Determined to clear his name, she has counterfeited a marque and set out as a privateer to arrest and interrogate James. James, on the other hand, was marooned on a deserted island as punishment for accepting a worthless ring as payment and falling for a pair of pretty eyes. When he is captured by Annalisa, he finds himself intrigued by her anew-- if there's one thing a pirate likes, it's danger.
This is part of Scholastic's Point imprint. Not many people know that, in addition to horror, they dabbled in romance as well. This is YA so there's mostly just kissing, but there is sexy kissing and sexy swordfighting, as well, and there is a surprising amount of action. Mutinies and public floggings and seedy New Orleans taverns. After reading THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE, I found myself thirsting for more adventures on the high seas, and this book really delivered. It doesn't have that irritating "YA" tone that a lot of the books coming out these days have. Maybe it's because Heath is so used to writing adult romances that she doesn't condescend to her audience at all.
If you're looking for a light romance, and you like reading about pirates who aren't rapey, I think you'll really enjoy this book. It's got dangerous boys, lots of kissing, and a strong heroine who doesn't take any shit. The ending was satisfying and I wish I'd read this when I was a teen. I think I would have loved it even more than I did now, reading it for the first time as an adult.
As you may know, I'm doing a project where I reread some of my adolescent favorites, so when I saw a copy of THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE sitting in a little free library, I knew I just had to pick it up and give it a read because this was one of my favorites as a young teen.
One of my favorite literary tropes is spoiled heroines who end up undergoing a redemption arc. Charlotte Doyle is a very proper young miss, class-conscious and prone to airs. When we meet her, she is dressed to the nines and about to board a ship to return to her New Englandian family from English boarding school. She's also such a laughable prude; definitely, she is the type of girl who would be the villain in anyone else's story but her own. Ugh on wheels.
Right away, things are super sus. Men refuse to work as porter for her luggage once they find out the name of her ship and its captain. The other two families she was supposed to be traveling with have mysteriously dropped out. And she's given several warnings from the crew-- including the gift of a knife from the preacher/cook Zachariah. Perhaps most sinisterly of all is when she takes tea with the captain and he tells her to be his eyes and ears and to inform him if she ever spots a round robin:
A symbol of mutiny.
TRUE CONFESSIONS is a fantastic story of betrayal and redemption. Even though it is young adult/middle grade, it imparts lessons about social class and morality that have stuck with me for over ten years. It is truly chilling in parts and had me breathlessly turning pages late at night with a flashlight when I was a kid. Perhaps best of all, it is a tale of adventure on the high seas with a heroine who is rife with agency and is permitted to be flawed and unlikable at times, because that is what it is to be human.
If you enjoy stories about strong female protagonists, this is a must-have. It really held up, and I thought it was fun that the author included a ship diagram and a recipe for duff.
I really have to stop writing my reviews over wine or they're going to make you all think I'm even more ridiculous than I actually am. First, major thanks to my book bestie, Heather, for reading this book with me. She recently read and loved LIONS AND LACE by this author on my recommendation and I thought it would be totes mcgoats fun if we decided to read another McKinney Original because she's just SO GOOD at writing really intense heroes who are kind of domineering (in a hot way) and innocent heroines who still have a lot of personality. Case in point: WHEN ANGELS FALL, which is probably one of my favorite romances of all time because of its hero, Ivan Tramore, who is my king.
Initially, I really loved TILL DAWN TAMES THE NIGHT. It has this fun Indiana Jones on the high seas vibe to it and the hero locks eyes with the heroine in chapter two and it is... INTENSE. Like, with eye contact like that, you don't need explicit content in books if you get me. So I was like YAAAAAAASS. Especially since the hero is actually a hot pirate who is obsessed with finding this rare jewel that ONLY the heroine knows about and also he has long hair, an earring, and a dragon tattoo on his back that is the coolest tattoo I've ever seen described in a book.
So obviously, I was like YES.
The problem is that... um??? When the hero and heroine get together, he makes her feel bad about herself? It's like you have all this delicious tension that seems to be building towards a meaningful connection and then it just ends up becoming super cyclical with the heroine and the hero getting into the same petty arguments over and over without any sort of development. LIONS AND LACE was a complex story of revenge becoming attraction and WHEN ANGELS FALL is a tale of dark, passionate obsession that has the potential to blossom into destruction. TILL DAWN TAMES THE NIGHT had elements of both, but it felt hopelessly unfinished, almost like a rough draft composite of both stories.
I was mildly interested until about 65% or so where I just lost all interest. The villain had the potential to be grim and horrible but I don't think his character was done all that well, either. I'm wickedly disappointed at how quickly this went from simmering to stultifying and if I didn't know McKinney had written this, I would have called you a liar and slapped you in the face for telling me that my ultimate fave penned this sad, disappointing mess. I still love this woman and she can come to my birthday party whenever, but she's going to have to check this book at the door before she comes into my house.
Sometimes the GR book recommendation algorithm is suspect, but this time it was totally on point. Because I'm reading a vintage book about pirates, itSometimes the GR book recommendation algorithm is suspect, but this time it was totally on point. Because I'm reading a vintage book about pirates, it thought I might enjoy another vintage book about pirates.
Also, look at that cover. I'm sCREAMING. Yes, please! ...more
Zebra romances are so much fun. Unfortunately, a lot of their best imprints are now defunct, but I believe a lot of the rights reverted back to the authors and you can get them pretty cheap on Kindle. Like this one! MY WICKED PIRATE is everything I love in a non-dark romance. There's adventure and swashbuckling and banter and forbidden romance and a hero who understands What Women Want™ (answer: dinner, a lavender-scented bath, and a cold glass of Lambrusco).
Alanis is on her way to see her fiance when she is kidnapped by the terrifying pirate, Eros, who is known as The Viper. Don't worry, I think his name is silly too. BUT HE'S HOT, even if he is named after the naked love angel of the Greek gods. Anyway, it turns out that her fiance has been keeping Eros's sister as his mistress and he's in love with her, but he was going to marry Alanis anyway to keep up appearances. Gross. So after an exchange is done for the two women, they go to the bad fiance's Jamaica estate, and basically end up switching back when Eros tricks Alanis into joining him once more as he flees for his life.
It turns out the pirate is not all that he seems though. Even though he is every bit as terrifying as his reputation claims (in all ways), he has a dark and honestly rather tragic secret. He's also involved in some very high-level political machinations which involve the House of Sforza, King Louis of France, and the Dey of Algiers. And the book takes us to all of these places, dealing out angsty romance and court intrigue by the handful, and I ate up all of it on a silver spoon. The romance was prolonged but really well done. By the time they finally did it, I wanted to bang a gong in celebration. I also really liked the chemistry between the H and the h, and how you could really feel how high the stakes were.
I do feel like the book was a little too long, though. By, like, maybe about one hundred pages. It also employs a trope I really hate: Pretending I Don't Love You for Your Own Good. The hero is also a bit of a Sad Draco in Leather Pants, which can be a trope that I enjoy, but sometimes the way he levered his emotional issues against the heroine was so frustrating that I wanted to scream. Maybe it worked for me because you could tell that he really did care for the heroine, even if he didn't always know how to show it. Also, some of the sex scenes are not so great. Most of them are, but towards the end, when the book started to lose steam, it lost steam in other places too. MAJOR KUDOS, however, for casually finding excuses to make the hero shirtless, multiple sensual bathing scenes, and exquisite descriptions of food that had me craving Middle Eastern feasts at 2 in the morning.
Never read anything by this author before but I'll definitely be checking out her other stuff.
Danelle Harmon is fast becoming one of my solid favorites in the 90s bodice ripper experience canon. She just does such a great job of writing "caring alpha" stereotypes who manage to be all strong and manly and brutish without resorting to rape-- at least, they're not rapey in the "revised" editions I've been reading with my friends on Kindle. Who knows what the originals are like? But whereas some of those "revised" editions read like rape apologist bullshit, where the act itself is taken out and replaced with a bit of the ol', "no-no-no-yes" shtick (which somehow actually manages to be more offensive than they were in the beginning, when they were blatant about it), Harmon's heroes are solidly charming, and make me swoon every time.
PIRATE IN MY ARMS is set in the early 1700s. Maria is a beautiful woman living with her aunt in a Puritan community. The other women are all insanely jealous of her good looks and one of her frenemies decides to convince her to sidle up to the dangerous Sam Bellamy and seduce him in order to make the guy she likes jealous. Unfortunately, this being a romance novel, Sam Bellamy seduces her right back and ends up taking her innocence (gasp). He realizes pretty quickly what he's done and that she's not actually a whore (oops) like he assumed (double oops), and offers to marry her. But Maria is too proud and turns him down angrily, but quickly realizes that she actually kinda likes him sorta.
Sam is actually a fearsome pirate known as Black Sam and when Maria's aunt refuses to let them marry, he goes off to seek his riches, leaving a sad Maria behind. Especially since she's pregnant. Luckily Puritans are totally accepting of that sort of thing-- HA! JK, they totally ostracize her for it and throw rocks at her and basically murder her baby. Just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, Sam wrecks ashore trying to return back to her and she thinks he's died and everyone gloats about the dead pirates while Maria's heart is just about breaking into pieces. Seriously, fuck those town people. Gloating Puritanical asshole trash.
Luckily, this being a romance novel, Sam isn't actually dead. She nurses him back to health and tells him not to be a pirate anymore and he agrees-- but LOL, jk it was a lie. He's going to be a pirate until he rescues what remains of his friends and then he's going to give it up (he can quit any time he wants, he's not addicted, he just doesn't want to). Maria is infuriated by this double-cross and quickly becomes a bitch on wheels. This is the most difficult and sloggy portion of the book for me, because she basically just goes into these circular arguments about how much she hates him for pirating etc. etc., and I'm like, GIRL. HE HAS TO GO SAVE HIS FRANS. #BFFS.
Fuck you, Maria.
Luckily, she redeems herself in the end.
The last 10% of the book though? Man. So intense. I was biting my nails. I forgot how well Harmon can do emotionally intense scenes. It reminded me of another BR I did where we all read CAPTAIN OF MY HEART, and I was quaking with flashbacks from OUTLANDER. (Luckily, the villain wasn't quite that sadistic and psycho, but he was still pretty bad. Eep!) Also, I can't imagine how much research went in to all those nautical scenes. The way Harmon writes, you really feel like you're on a bona fide pirate ship. I learned so many cool terms and the action scenes were AMAZING. When I finished the book, I was like, OMG, how am I ever going to get my pirate fix now?
Luckily, the author coincidentally happened to make all of her pirate-themed books free for Kindle Unlimited. Which I have. There's only one explanation, clearly, which is that she's stalking me and wants me to read more of her books-- which, luckily-- I am only too happy to do. I have already downloaded like four of them and they are waiting in my Kindle to be read. #WorkThatKUSub
I honestly don't get why this author isn't more popular. She's so cool. And she even looks kind of like an IRL version of Merida, from Brave. Like, I kind of high key want her to be my friend.
Thanks to Heather for BRing this with me and cheering me on to the finish line! Go check out her review!
I scored this book as a Kindle freebie several years ago and it's been languishing in The Library of Purgatory and Laziness
™
for years. Lest you get confused by the name in the Kindle store, it was originally published as THE BLACK ROSE, but the author republished it as SEVEN NIGHTS WITH A PIRATE along with some apparent revisions. Comparing the reviews for those who read the original with those who read the updated digital version, it seems like some rapey scenes were removed and some sexy scenes were added. To what effect, I'm not sure, as this was still pretty rapey.
Our heroine is a woman named Tess, who masquerades as a local smuggler called The Fox. (She also works with the real Fox, but dresses up like him when he is busy.) When she's not smuggling, she operates the inn that also serves as their base of operations/hideout. Tess is haunted by her abusive father, who appears to have locked her in the seller and also sold her out as a prostitute to equally abusive and opportunistic men. When he died, he left her with debts as a last "Eff you." She's still trying to pay them off.
Our "hero" is a viscount named Dane St. Pierre, Lord Ravenhurst. He's a viscount and a veteran of the still-ongoing Napoleonic Wars, and haunted by the deaths of his friends and his own close brush with death aboard his ship. He was a childhood friend of Tess's, and when his superiors draw him back into military business to investigate a smuggling operation in the town of Rye where a traitor might be feeding secret intel to the French, he is shocked to see the child he knew all grown up.
Until about 50% of the way in, I thought for sure that this was going to be a 4- or 5-star read. Tess was such a great heroine- in fact, she was everything I love in a heroine: no-nonsense, smart, and brave. Dane was the perfect dangerous hero, and the unresolved sexual tension between him and Tess was off the charts. I also loved the cat and mouse between them, when she did her smuggling and he did his investigating; you couldn't help but wonder - what would happen when he found out??
40% of the way in, Dane finds out that Tess is involved with smuggling and thinks she's the lover of the Fox and he, like, loses his sh*t. I think in the original he rapes her, but in the update, the author tones it down to a "civil" sexual assault *eye roll*. She flees and ends up hitting her head, and her head injury makes her blind. When she wakes up, she's in the care of love interest #2, Andre, an equally rapey pirate, who definitely takes advantage of her in her incapacitated state.
The last act of the book was so crazy that I honestly didn't know what to expect. Which love interest, if any, would Tess end up with? And what would happen to the redundant one? Who was the traitor, after all? What was the dealio with Tess's dad? And how on Earth would this story end?
The ending, in all fairness, was actually pretty good. There was a twist I wasn't expecting (although in retrospect, I probably should have expected). We find out who the villain was, and I wasn't expecting that either, so that was cool, too. The heroine even manages to get in a duel with Dane, and I am very much pro lady duel. I would rate this book much higher if not for the fact that Tess's character development really suffered when she entered the "care" of Andre. I loved how strong she was in the beginning, but she really wimped out when that pirate dude did his misogynistic flexes.
I'm torn between feeling okay about this book and guiltily liking it because I am trash, so my feelings are floating between a 2.5 and a 3. It was action-packed, filled with swashbuckling, smuggling goodness and some twists that really caught me off-guard. If you like vintage romances and want to be part of the 90s Bodice Ripper Experience
™, you could do worse than to pick this book up.
I am a woman of refined and exquisite taste - except when it comes to my taste in books, where I read whatever trash I can get my hands on. THIS GOLDEN RAPTURE is the perfect example of smutty pulp that has been all but forgotten with the passage of time. I happened upon this author randomly while checking out books shelved under the "bodice ripper" tag on Amazon, and was delighted to find that, unlike the vast majority of pulpy bodice rippers, Fancy DeWitt's books were still available in ebook format, presumably in the original edition and without the PC-rewrites authors like Catherine Coulter like to do to make their books more palatable to modern audiences.
This is my second Fancy DeWitt book. The first book, WILD HEARTS, was a rapey Western reminiscent of SWEET SAVAGE LOVE. I enjoyed it, despite some slow portions and OTT scenes. THIS GOLDEN RAPTURE could not be more different. Instead of being set in the 19th century "old west," THIS GOLDEN RAPTURE is set in Tudor England, right around the time that the Catholics and the Protestants were really going to town on one another.
Diane is a busty noblewoman whose father is about to betroth her to a dude whose pockets are probably inversely proportional to the size of his peen, this being the Renaissance when women were chattel and forced to marry old men who could have been their fathers or even their grandfathers in terms of age discrepancy. She is kidnapped by a pirate named Guy Ramsey, previously a nobleman whose house has fallen into disgrace after his father was charged for consorting with the Spanish and loving Catholics and trying to help both get their fingers into some forbidden English pies. Now his father is executed - falsely, Guy claims - and with no recourse, he decides to kidnap an English lady.
Diane is kept on the ship for a while, watching in horror as Guy is made to walk the plank and an evil Spanish grandee terrorizes her with threats of rape while the Basque captain turns his eye the other way and the jealous Basque OW Aimee dreams of petty revenge to make Diane's life miserable. Also on the ship is a South American indiginous woman named Amute, who is there with her father to lead the Spanish sailors aboard the ship to El Dor-fucking-ado.
I thought there was no way this would pan out to anything - until I read the summary of the book on Goodreads. They make it to El Dorado, the Spanish people betray Amute and her father when their greed gets the better of them, and decide to go after their people with guns and cannons. Meanwhile, Diane becomes a goddess who is about to get married to the Native prince, only Guy is there to beat the prince to the wedding night, which involves pre-gaming it with an underage girl, for some reason.
The book ends with an exploding ship and Guy and Diane sailing off to their happy ending, and of course his honor is restored when it's revealed that the man Diane's father would have married her off to was actually the traitor who was helping the Spanish this whole time. This book was even crazier than WILD HEARTS, with Guy being psychic (he learned from Indian - that's Indian as in actually from India - wise men); ridiculous scenes that make this feel like an X-rated version of The Road to El Dorado, and woman-on-woman erotic oil massages because, as my Goodreads friends put it when I posted this as a status update, what else are you going to do aboard a pirate ship? Point taken.
I would recommend reading this book for the lolz alone, but it doesn't really hold up plot-wise the way WILD HEARTS did. WILD HEARTS had an OK plot and told a story I was interested in, whereas I found myself increasingly bored with THIS GOLDEN RAPTURE, reading only for the WTF scenes to see just what crazy shit the author would deliver to give me my money's worth.
Honestly, I'd rather just watch The Road to El Dorado and then write my own erotic fanfic for it.
When I was offered an ARC of this book, it was a no brainer. I loved the first book in the series, DANGEROUS, and couldn't wait to read more of these characters. Mia was such a strong character, and I loved how the author flouted some of the harem romance tropes even as she worked to modernize it for the tastes of a contemporary audience who might not be too chill with polygamy and rape.
BARBAROUS also follows in DANGEROUS'S footsteps, in that it is at heart a pirate romance (see cover) that also is a bit of a throwback to 80s bodice ripper culture (again, see cover). I was so excited to read this book but sadly, the most appealing thing about this book for me was the cover.
Here's the thing, this book takes place before the events of DANGEROUS, so when Mia initially makes a cameo I was really confused because she had just returned to England and was acting really strangely (totally OOC). So what this means in the canon of this world is that nothing that happened in book one has happened yet, which technically makes this book more of a standalone prequel. Which, okay, that's weird, but whatever floats your boat.
Second, whereas the first book's romance was one of the most compelling aspects of the book for me, Hugh and Daphne have zero chemistry. I didn't ship them at all, didn't really see what they saw in each other beyond the generic "here's a good-looking person I can do the hanky-panky with" sense. Also, the sex scenes in here were, um... bad. "Wet glove"? Um, what is this? Bertrice Small?
Third, even though I liked that the heroine was previously married and had two children, it's worth noting that her children (twin boys) are a product of rape and she was married to a much older man to cover up the scandal. And the main conflict in this book comes from her rapist continuing to taunt and blackmail her. That's much less fun and exciting than the conflict in the first book, which involved a lost son, and a political coup with a royal family. I felt like Daphne's rape was touched upon in a very superficial way and thought it was odd how little she appeared to be affected by it.
Fourth, it was boring. Unfortunately. I skimmed a lot.
I'm still excited for the third book, SCANDALOUS, which features another pirate, a flamboyant Frenchman named Bouchard. (Seriously amped for the cover reveal on that one.) However, my expectations have been tempered somewhat, because this was a real nosedive from the first book.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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