The Pirate Bride

I fell in love when I read the first book Daughters of the Mayflower series The Mayflower Bride and am so excited to be reviewing the second book in the series, The Pirate Bride.

We begin the story with Maribel Cordoba, a 11-year-old girl that is grieving the recent deaths of both her mother and beloved grandfather.  The only family she has to speak of is her Spanish father who has brought her aboard a ship full of privateers and Captain Beaumont, a man that is harboring a vendetta for the spaniard.  Cordoba murdered both his brother and his mother years before and Captain Beaumont is ready to settle the score.  A brawl aboard the ship leads to Maribel becoming an orphan but she is quickly "adopted" by the many of the privateers and Captain Beaumont himself.

When the ship is attacked Captain Beaumont believes that the young Maribel is killed during the battle and is racked with guilt for years.  You find out that Captain Beaumont is in fact Jean-Luc Valmont from the prominent Valmont family of New Orleans, Louisiana.  No one knows that both men are actually the same person or that Maribel in fact survived the battle and has been growing up at an orphanage on a small island in the Caribbean.

I first want to say that I fell in love with the main premise of the book.  The action was intriguing and I finished the book quite quickly.  The characters were well developed and you can't help but fall in love with Maribel's tenacity.

The only fault I found with the story was the age difference between Jean-Luc and Maribel which, if you read other reviews, I am not alone in my opinion.  When the story begins you see Captain Beaumont (Jean-Luc) more like a father figure to the fatherless Maribel.  He is incredibly protective of her and his heartbrokenness from losing her is almost palpable.  When the story fast forwards to Maribel as a young adult Jean-Luc is also quite a few years older and yet the age difference is not a major concern not only between the two of them but for any of their acquaintances.

Other than that I really enjoyed The Pirate Bride and cannot wait to read the next book in The Daughters of the Mayflower series, The Captured Bride which was just released last month.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.  All opinions are my own.