Shannon Drake 'The Pirate Bride'

The Pirate Bride, hm. I'm just now thinking about the title of this book and realizing it has nothing to do with the story. Do authors lack control over the titles like they do over the covers?

I digress. Let me first admit that my favorite romance novels in my first blush of youth were ship board romance novels. The heroine stows away as the cabin boy and is discovered by the swashbuckling captain. Even though she's betrayed his trust, he can't stay away from her, and she slowly wins the crew over with her gentle sweet ways. I don't know how silly those books were since I have quite purposely not revisited them. But my sensibilities are a bit different now. So when I saw this book at the library it was with some trepidation and nostalgia that I picked it up.

I'll start with what I liked. The set up that gets these two together. She's captaining a pirate ship, he's captaining a merchantman. She comes upon him and his ship is clearly outclassed. Instead of getting all his men killed he proposes single combat. She agrees (disguised as a male pirate by the way) and she loses, narrowly. She gets to take half his goods, keep him prisoner for ransom and the rest of his men sail away.

He is the one who wiggles his way into the good graces of her crew. He figures out she's a woman pretty quickly, they pursue the dastardly man who killed her family, in the process she and he get washed over board in a storm, and come ashore on a deserted island. Another ship broke up in the storm and trunks and barrels keep washing up on shore making their stay quite comfortable, leaving them time to mess around.

I could have loved this book, but what I didn't like....well, there's a point in the book when you finally realize how ridiculous it is to think that after killing a notorious pirate, she took over his ship as THE CAPTAIN. I've been around sailors my whole life and I'm well aware that I don't know how to sail, much less captain a schooner. But in a romance, you could call that a technicality. What really bugged me was the convoluted escape/rescue plans. I've been reading a lot of Patricia Briggs lately and one of the things she does so well is the plots of rescue, revenge, and staying alive when someone wants to do you harm. The characters think through their actions and assess their risks realistically given the parameters of the fictional world they inhabit. I didn't feel that sort of clarity when it came to the action part of this book, and as a result of these characters making unclear/silly choices, I lost affection for them. Does that make sense?

Overall, good start, great middle, falls apart for me in the end. If you are dieing for a pirate book that doesn't involve old school rape, this might sate your appetite.

Historical Romance 2008: 2 of 5 good hearted whores.

Susan Wiggs "Charm School"

I so almost loved this book. In the eighties my favorite books were the heroines who stowed away on ships, where the crew came to love her because she's so genuine and nice, and finally the hero is shown the light of her gloriousness by how much the crew like her. Never mind the complete lack of any inappropriate advances by any of these PIRATES who've haven't seen a woman in five months. But I digress.

Charm school has the classic, wonderful, ugly duckling heroine. She's smart but a wall flower in a family of beautiful people. She runs away to sea with the unconventional southern captain, she gets some sun, becomes active and eats less, thereby losing some weight, and gains confidence by befriending every single crew member on the whole ship. The consummation is late in the book. It fit well with the storyline but I have noticed most books put it on page 3 these days, and I'm assuming there is some market research behind that decision. Anyway, I am a total sucker for these transformation storylines, I was even tolerant of some plot twists near the end that were a bit silly. BUT, when she starts into the "Why didn't I tell him I loved him. How could I not know I was in love with him." My snort-o-meter went off big time. This smart character would not have been thinking this drivel.

In the scope of a highly enjoyable book, this was a minor annoyance. And for those of you paying way too much attention to the rules I set down about this blog, yes it was published in 1999. I was snookered by the "re-issue." Usually I check for that but I missed this one and thank goodness I hadn't read it before.

Historical Romance 1999: 4 of 5 salty knaves.