By Lauren Everly

Book Review

Rating: 5 stars

Full Review

My experience with historical fiction and historical romance prior to this read was quite limited, so I went into this book with weird hopes and completely blind. I actually had a negative bias towards it to some extent. This is the book that altered my brain chemistry.

Update: this book quite literally started a new love for the genre for me, but I hadn’t realized how many other historical fiction books I’d already read that I have absolutely adored and loved (I realize that my prior statement was saying that I did not have a lot of experience with the genre and I realized that’s not completely accurate ) so this was a book that really helped me become a more full rounded reader with an understanding of the historical fiction genre as a whole and historical fiction versus mythology and folklore, etc. etc.

(I can usually tell on the first five pages of a book if I’m gonna love it or not and by around 20% and I’m either hate reading or completely swept away and that’s for most of my DNF occur .
By 15% and I had:
-subscribed to this imprint’s newsletter
-stalked their net galley page and website to see how many books I could possibly get from the imprint that are on Kindle Limited
-immediately downloaded like 5 new series
-I have become obssessed with imprint because they an anti-AI policy in each of their books.)

I genuinely thought that the romcom genre was “dead” to some extent because when I went to look up romcoms, I couldn’t find anything 🪦and this book I laughed at least 20 times during, so this is fundamentally changed my idea of what a rom com “is” and how to categorize it and whatnot.

I am now a historical fiction romance addict, and I will need to start a collection. This is altered my brain chemistry.

I know that I’ve read other good historical fiction and good historical fiction romance books in the past, but this is one of those books that has really stuck with me.

The tropes in this book are the real deal:
✨Enemies to lovers
✨Female rage and rebellion
✨Steamy
✨Legacy
✨Secrets
✨Trauma

The reason I am focusing this review so much on my prior experience is because I think a lot of other people avoid the genre potentially for the same reasons (I know I can’t be the only one that is in this mentality so I’m hoping that other people will be convinced to give this genre try) But I also am really heavily trying to avoid giving spoilers away while also trying to share why I love this book so much.

It is really difficult to say anything about this book without spoiling it because there’s so much happens and because the events compound on top of each other.

Just know that it’s an amazing pirate book and it is told from dual POV and there’s comedy and adventure and action and sadness and humor all wrapped into this art piece.

Thank you for this ARC! I appreciate the opportunity to leave honest feedback voluntarily.

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Continued review with spoilers

In this book, we have Samantha, a pirate with red hair who works for a shipping company under her uncle (that that’s really just a front for being pirates).

<img src=”https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExdnN3MGZubXp0ZnB4anE3cGw4cGUxazZtdDMwd2pkeHRhYXQyMHk2NyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/LUnvxp4bEwi5s3WV1c/giphy.gif” width=”40″

Because pirates are people that steal things the government doesn’t love that and we have a lieutenant that sees Samantha’s ship while she’s sailing one day and asks them for an inspection (like a customs inspection just like a regular inspection), but Samantha doesn’t want to do an inspection and she’s a little hotheaded because she’s young and she’s got this thirst for battle and she has this anger within her in this spite. she decides that she doesn’t want to comply with the law and she goes and attacks his ship so much so that they end up winning the battle – however, there is a trickle down effect because you can’t just go after the government and expect them to not come back in full force. The thing is tge lieutenant and Samantha have the hots for each other.

The lieutenant comes back in full force, and the next pirate he finds is ordered for the noose, which makes Samantha feel really guilty because she didn’t mean to escalate the fight between the government and Pirates (like she didn’t think about that ripple effect and now she’s realizing that maybe she should’ve just complied and let an inspection occur but what’s in the past is in the past and she can’t really do anything about that now).

The issue is that her uncle who owns the ship and hired her is not super happy with the fact that she didn’t comply with the inspection and that now he has to deal with even tighter regulations on his front, and so he grounds her, just like a child and she ends up painting a tornado in the garden because she’s pissed.

Here’s the issue – we have an actual villain pirate that’s mean and angry and he’s doing bad things like really bad things for sport.

Because Samantha was wearing a mask to hide her identity when she took over the lieutenant ship and denied customs and pissed her uncle off when she takes off her mask, Everyone knows that she is Samantha who is associated with her uncle (however with a pirate mask on she’s a pirate with red hair.) The lieutenants only aware of her and only knows her with this mask identity as a pirate. He is not aware that Henry’s daughter is Samantha. Because Henry does own a legitimate business and it happens to be a front, there are social gatherings that Henry needs to upkeep and go and attend to keep his image and Samantha is expected to attend to these balls too because if they aren’t socially putting themselves out there Samantha’s never gonna find a husband and that’s so important. Samantha doesn’t like any of the men and she just kinda wants to be at sea.
Which is why she’s so pissed that her uncle told her that she can’t command a ship right now because she is too antsy and wants to fight really bad so she just paints tornadoes and doesn’t feel very good and she decides after talking to Lieutenant (because he came over to uncle Henry’s house), they neighbors by the way, yeah. They all run in the same social circle.

Let me explain

So literally, Samantha is the niece of Henry. He owns the shipping container business, but he’s actually a pirate so it’s a front. To society he is a successful business owner with a large fleet. In public, he is known as a rich man who owns the shipping container business shipping business so of course he knows this lieutenant and of course I live in the same neighborhood because it’s a wealthy area so it makes sense in this world for them to be neighbors they even attend the same social events so it’s happenstance that he comes to uncle Henry. Unfortunately, at the event, he was also kind of trying to do something to uncle Henry, but he ran into Samantha and this is the first time that he’s realizing that there might be a connection, but he completely doubt himself and they like see each other for the first time at this point, so they kind of have an understanding of who they are and They avoid each other heavily they don’t like each other other

Lieutenants kind of at a loss and is wondering what to do because for just ruthlessly killing people for sport and so Henry’s like if you need my flea and that would help like I’m down to help you and so yeah because Lieutenant just doesn’t really have his stuff his ducks in line he doesn’t have the budget. He knows that Henry has bigger resources than he does so he goes to Henry for help and Henry is like yeah we could help you.

Samantha is obviously aware of everything because she was wearing the mask but lieutenant Thompson does not know that Samantha is the pirate that overtook his ship last week and it caused this whole ripple effect of him hanging someone and then everything just like going to hell in a handbasket.

So Samantha is just huffing puffing not having a good time. She’s up in her room because she’s grounded. She’s said hi to Thompson and like doesn’t really wanna talk to him. She wants to paint her tornado in the garden OK so anyways she’s relaxing in her bed and then she’s like you know what I don’t wanna be here so she Climbs out the window and hops like down the tree because she has good balance and she starts to walk around the garden, and then someone knocks her out and kidnaps her. We find out that this is thorn who has kidnapped her and is basically trying to get something from her.

So she literally gets kidnapped is in this cell and then all of a sudden she hears the ship coming and she’s like oh no they’re gonna die because first of all I’m stuck in like this really scary pirates cell and like there’s no way like the ship that’s coming just gonna die so she’s like crying because her entire body is vibrating from these cannons. She’s like I don’t feel like this is a good time for me.

It turns out that it was Lieutenants ship that they were sinking and he’s totally fine so they just like plop them in the same cell together, which is super steamy because they actually like like each other.
Basically it gets real steamy because they like don’t want to like each other but they have to work together and they’re just like undeniably very attracted to each other so oops and (also he already took her V card so like might as well right OK ) and he really want someone who loves to see and like most women just don’t and so they’re literally a match made in heaven, but because she’s a pirate and he’s basically a cop they’re literally enemies to lovers like that that’s not gonna work.

And this is also around the time when Griff, which is the original captain of the ship that Samantha like runs, but Samantha is like earning her rank. She’s getting old enough to like Captain ship herself without Henry there and so Griff is like her Bestie, but Griff also supposed to be a babysitter to some time because he’s supposed to watch things and make sure she doesn’t like dying and stuff so he comes to rescue whoever because of course he does he just like always has this like six sense of like what’s going on and he just looks like Griff will be there and like you just always know that it’s gonna be OK cause Griff exist and he’s gonna be fine. He just knows what’s happening.

Griff goes and rescues Samantha and Samantha doesn’t have her mask on obviously but this meeting of Griff calling Samantha Captain makes Lieutenant Thompson realize oh my God I literally took the virginity of the pirate who sunk my ship last week and it happens to be the daughter of the shipping container CEO like absolutely not his head is spinning. He’s having a moment he’s not doing well and he’s having this moment. Griff is like we’re leaving his ass behind because we don’t have enough space and timeframe and also like he attacked us he’s a cop we’re not taking him and Samantha, but he’s hot and he’s kind of on our side. We should try to take him and he’s innocent and like we’re not taking him.

So she has to listen to Griff and they don’t take Lieutenant Thompson. She’s like super convinced that captain Thorne has definitely killed Thompson. He was just like no way that he’s been allowed to survive.

Samantha goes back to save him.

So anyways, Thompson walked back up in the seller and Samantha is like OK so we’re just gonna like go and go back to the spot and Griff’s like I saved your ass. We’re not gonna go back for Lieutenant Thompson because he think shit remember that like we’re not doing that he’s a cop and Samantha’s like again we’re gonna go back and it’s not just for him. I’m like 100% sure .

The reason that there’s all this drama is because there’s a half of a map that people want for a treasuee but you can’t find the treasure without the other half so one of them used to get the map and they all both hate each other and the thing is she’s pretty sure her parents literally died by the hands of this crazy captain trying to get this treasure. she’s like I need to get this treasure and Griff is like we’re not doing that that’s stupid. I just rescued you and she’s like we’re getting the map….

She’s fully convinced that her sexy man is going to be dead and she’s like I don’t know but we’re gonna try to do this and I’m not giving up. I’m not taking the safe route like we could literally have our shift just like sunk on the way back there like I’m taking risks and I’m tired of being told what to do so grip is like fine like you’re an idiot but whatever I love you we’re gonna do this. I’m on your side

That’s about 60% into the book and includes as few spoilers as possible. Obsessed!

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