The Bride and the Buccaneerby Darlene Marshallreviewed by Valarie PelisseroJanuary 2010, 352 pages, Publisher: Amber Quill Press, ISBN: 1602726123 Back Cover Blurb: “Lucky Jack” Burrell's quest for revenge against Sophia Deford will have to wait until he discharges a debt. He has to help her find the fabled pirate treasure Garvey's Gold, then he can wring her dainty neck. Sophia has no intention of sharing anything with anyone. She will have all of Garvey's Gold, no matter how much Jack's lean-muscled body makers her want to get to know him just a little bit better fore she gets rid of him.
As the two adversaries squabble their way across Territorial Florida following the clues on their treasure map, they know that before they're through they're either going to kiss each other, kill each other, or both.
What does it say about a book that when you are in a doctor's office you would rather stare at the walls than read? Unfortunately that was my experience with Darlene Marshall's The Bride and the Buccaneer. When I put the book down I didn't want to pick it back up again, which is a shame because the story and writing showed such promise in the first chapter when Jack and Sophia first meet. I thought what the author had done was clever by bringing me a heroine who was no milk and water miss, but instead could hold her own against, and even outsmart, a highwayman, and I was eagerly anticipating reading their journey. Unfortunately I was left wanting.
The story ebbs and flows so much that I started to get seasick. The author spends an inordinate amount of time on the history of Florida, time which I would have preferred being spent on character and plot development. Five years pass after Jack and Sophia's first encounter before they meet up again and we learn how incredibly boring life has been for Sophia during those years, but we learn nothing about Jack and I never really felt like I knew his character and so I couldn't connect with him. And after reading more about Sophia I did NOT want to connect with her character.
Sophia was raised a gambler's daughter so she is very good at bluffing everyone, and when she meets Jack for the first time he robs her coach thinking that he is stealing Lord Whitfield's (Sophia's guardian) money after being cheated by that man. Instead he finds Sophia and takes her with him, for no really good reason. Sophia pretends to be afraid, gains his sympathy, then coshes him over the head with a rock, and here is where it got good (the only good part of the book), she then strips him naked, ties him up, dresses in his clothes, steals his horse and the money he just stole, and makes her way to her former governess in Portsmouth, where they use the money to open a bookstore. For the next five years Sophia leads a dull life as a widow, but then one day her friend Captain Tanner gives Sophia a letter to deliver to one John Burrell in Florida and Sophia sees this as an opportunity to go adventuring. But, before she leaves she sends a letter to Lord Whitfield telling him where she is going and what she is looking for. Why? I have no idea.
The adventure is the lure of “Garvey's Gold” to the tune of fifty-thousand pounds. Naturally Sophia's grandfather was a mate of the infamous Captain Garvey and helped the captain bury his treasure retaining half of the map and the clues, which he gave to Sophia. Captain Tanner, a young cabin boy to Captain Garvey, has the other half which he has entrusted to Sophia to deliver to Jack.
Jack is a privateer who takes Sophia's ship thinking he will finally get some kind of reckoning from his nemesis, but, naturally before Jack's ship gets too far they are overtaken by another pirate ship, the captain of which owes Jack money and decides to discharge his debt by marrying Jack to his “fiancée”. Are you seeing the pattern of plot devices here that have no real purpose? It seemed like the entire book was one big plot device after another with no real story or any bridge between them.
Sophia is a double-dealing, double-crossing, sneak-thief and with every page I read I disliked her character more and more. At one point Sophia refers to Jack as “a strong, complaisant and not very bright man who will do what I need done,” and he was. If he was a worthy alpha hero or even a worthy beta hero I might have laughed at her antics, but, the way it was written just bored me.
There are no shortages of overused plot devices in this book. I finally finished the book, because that is what reviewers are supposed to do, but boy was it painful. I normally enjoy pirate stories but I just could not get into the adventures of Jack and Sophia. For me when I finish that last page of the book the author should have given me a story with characters I care about and a romance I can believe in, because after all isn't that why we read romances, but Ms. Marshall was not able to accomplish either of those goals to my reading satisfaction. If you are a fan of Ms Marshall's works then you may The Bride and the Buccaneer is for you, but as a first time reader, I much preferred staring at those walls in my doctor's office.
The Bride and the Buccaneer may be purchased in e-book format at Amber Quill
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