I have struggled with pirate books in the past and this one was unfortunately no different for me. Ever since I finished Black Sails, no other pirate content has met my expectations. And this one was even about Anne Bonny and Calico Jack! I really wanted to love it but I just didn't.

This wasn't quite what I was hoping out of a pirate novel, but I'm glad we're getting more stories about lady pirates, especially continuing the legacy of some lesser-known historical figures! I hope girls out there find this book and go down the rabbit hole in search of more lady pirates of history.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Sky Pony Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

This book sounded absolutely perfect. Pirates? Yes. *Female* pirates? Heeeeck yes. Add a little F/F romance, and I was so sure I would love it. Spoiler alert: I ... didn't. The biggest problem for me was that I didn't realize the focus of the book was going to be on said romance rather than the fun piratey things I was hoping for. It was mostly a case of where expectations just didn't match with reality.

- I thought this book was going to be about pirates, and it was … kind of? But mostly, it was a romance. Had I known that this plot largely focused on the romance and less on the piratey goodness, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. Honestly, this is likely why my rating is so low. I don’t enjoy romance books, for the most part. That’s why I tend to avoid them, unless they come highly recommended by people with similar reading tastes. I couldn’t even get behind this romance, because it felt very much like one party was simply using the other, and it seemed like the book was trying to say that this was just … okay.

- Mary’s character arc was lovely, where she has to go from being what’s expected of her to finding herself. It was sort of like a coming of age, except not quite. For her entire life, everything has depended on her pretending to be something she’s not and can never be, and wow has that left some scars. Little by little, though, she rediscovers the person she actually wants to be, and lets go of the expectations others have placed on her. The transformation was lovely to watch, and she was very easy to root for in that regard.

- For a book about pirates, there’s surprisingly little pirate action … but what little there was, I enjoyed. There’s a little swashbuckling swordplay afoot, which was enjoyable. Mostly, the focus was on the politics of pirates, and that was actually pretty fascinating to watch. It’s quite the struggle. Most of the book, though, I felt like it really dragged, because the focus was on these two women struggling with societal issues, and they weren’t all that interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good social commentary, and it can fit in with other things, but this felt more social commentary than pirate novel, and I thought I was signing up to watch two badass female pirates fall in love. Not listen to a diatribe against the patriarchy.

- I could sympathize with these characters, but none of them really grabbed me. The situations a lot of them end up in suck, and I feel really bad for them. I want better for them just because … well, I’m human, I suppose, and it’s nice for people not to have really crappy lives and to be able to catch a break? But I didn’t feel particularly attached to any of these characters. Mostly, they just frustrated me more than anything because of their choices and whatnot.

The premise for The Unbinding of Mary Reade sounded great and I was very excited. Lady pirates, yes please! It took me a very long time to write this review, I tried to get into this story at multiple occasions. But after trying for about a year, I think we can conclude I will not finish this book. I'm not interested in the characters, and I'm not really interested in the plot either.
I do enjoy historical fiction a lot, but this one was super boring and the alternating time lines didn't do it for me either. The characters didn't seem to have any chemistry and all in all I just didn't like this at all. I would definitely pick up another book about Mary Reade, because her story seems very interesting but this book couldn't keep me engaged for longer than 3 minutes at a time.

did not finish
I couldn't get past 50 pages in this book. The writing was not for me and I didn't like the characters

The premise of this book was strong. A retelling of the true story of a girl who disguised herself as a boy and ended up on the pirate ship, falling in love with Anne Bonny. Unfortunately the execution was lacking.

I'm sorry, but this book was boring. The dialogue felt stilted and there just was no action.

I had the feeling of reading a draft, rather than the finished book.

Still, I liked the idea behind the book.

I have to be honest. I was so, so ready to love this book. A queer lady pirate YA based on actual queer lady pirates? Sign me the heck up! But in actuality, the book never delivered for me. A lot of the history was changed for no discernible reason, there was some plot and behavior that veered dangerously close to the "cheating bisexual" trope, and the protagonist's gender identity was clearly way more complicated than McNamara ever explored, despite setting that up herself. What a disappointment!

Loved the plot, the characters and the pacing!!!! I read the book in a day. Interesting plot and beautiful writing. This is an author I will be reading again!

Trigger Warnings: homophobia, sexism, abusive relationships, transphobia and sexual assault
Representation: Sapphic, gender non-conforming, maybe trans and/or non-binary, gender fluid?

<b>Hands up if you were expecting this to be a cutting discussion on gender and not conforming to society's expectations and also lots of action-packed pirate scenes??? Keep your hands up if you were incredibly let down when you didn’t get any of this???

The Unbinding of Mary Reade follows Mary as she becomes Mark in a bid to get what every man in the 1700s got until she meets Anne who discovers her secret, tests her understanding of her own privilege and basically just wrecks havoc on Mary’s life.

If you want historically accurate portrayals of what it was like to live as a pirate across the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century and by that I mean do you like to read about loads of homophobia, sexism, abuse, transphobia and sexual assault while barely being given a commentary with anymore than a surface level depth, on any of them boy oh boy are you gonna love the fuck out of this book.

The writing was fine??? It wasn’t anything special but I guess it also wasn’t terrible which I mean, is not a great standard.

And for god sake, if you’re gonna write a book about pirates please give us more than just the label and basically a one (1) Pirate™ action scene.

I was super disappointed by the use of Mary Reade and Anne Bonny. The versions of them I know were kickass and didn’t give a single flying fuck about society’s expectations for them. We don’t get that Mary and Anne until the end of the fucking book. Why couldn’t we have gotten the story after this one instead?

I wanna see queer women going on adventures and running amuck, I’m really tired of the queer women struggling because they’re queer women narrative that’s forced down our throats.

I was really looking forward to this book, I'm all for f/f relationships in YA fiction, especially historical novels. Pirate novels are not my thing, but I wanted to give this one a chance. It just didn't work for me. It was slow and boring, and frankly, I couldn't stand the characters. Mary just grated on my nerves, she had zero personality and her love interest was a self involved idiot who didn't deserve Mary's devotion. I skimmed the latter half of this one. Not for me at all.

I wish this was a little more pirate-y. It's a great book and I'll certainly recommend it to fans of YA romances and historical novels, but I was disappointed at the scarce pirate action.

Frustratingly repetitive and needlessly sexist and homophobic. For a book that promises high seas adventures and a f/f romance, this is a let down in almost every way.

Pirates, what can go wrong? Well, apparently this story. I was so excited to read this one, it sounded like the perfect story! Sadly, that's not what happened. This story is very bland.

The Unbinding of Mary Reade is a story of pirates and longing, of adventure and fear, of discovering who you are and being true to that self, even if it puts you in harm's way.

Mary is kind and smart, but lost and lonely. Made to live as a boy for most of her life, she's torn as to what her place in the world will be when she gets older. How is she supposed to continue the charade of being a young man as time goes on? Things are expected of young men once they reach a certain age. And so she runs off with her friend Nat, who only ever knew her as Mark, and they turn to a life on the high seas. But when things go wrong and they end up separated, she wonders what will happen next. Until she sees pirates attack their ship. Until she sees a girl with the pirates, skirts and all with a pistol raised, and Mary knows what to do next. What follows is Mary's hard realization that it isn't so easy, being a woman pirate, and the chance to risk everything for what Mary truly wants in life: to be herself with someone she loves.

It's a rather unconventional sort of story, but then both Mary Reade and Anne Bonny are unconventional young women for the time period. Posing and dressing as a young man, fighting alongside men as pirates and thieves. This is not what proper God-fearing young women did. But what choice did they have? Forced into marriage or worse, unable to be in control of their lives or their futures. After living years as a boy, Mary can't see herself living as a young woman should. Quiet and demure, her opinion given little to no weight. Property of her husband. She's lived a mostly free life as a young man, seen what happens to young women when they're beaten and abused. What's she supposed to do? Keep her head down? Or fight to live the life she wants? This is a work of fiction, but Mary Reade and Anny Bonny were real pirates, real women fighting in a male-dominated space. I'd certainly recommend this to those looking for stories about Mary and Anne that lean more towards the romantic side of their relationship and not so much the piracy.

Oh boy... where do I start with this novel? I so wanted to love it but it just did not work at all. I think the idea was fantastic. It just failed on execution.

I found the story to be quite boring, which is weird because this is a book about PIRATES. But it really just felt like nothing was happening throughout the story; at times, it even felt like a biography than an actual fictional tale. I think this can be attributed to the fact that the characters were very one-dimensional and were hard to connect with. It was hard to distinguish the different voices of the characters because they just didn't really have much of a personality. I think Anne Bonny was developed a little bit better than Mary Reade, but even that is a bit of a stretch. I also didn't love the writing as it was far too juvenile for this type of story. It read more like a middle grade book than a YA fiction novel. It also seemed as if it was just a draft copy and not a full-fledged book. It definitely needed a lot more editing for the story to really shine through.

I don't want to go on and on bashing this novel. Clearly, the author had a really great concept and just wasn't able to follow through with it. Suffice to say that it wasn't what I had wanted or expected. For those reasons, I'm giving it a 1/5 stars.

Unfortunately, very dry. It was confusing how the chapters alternated between Mary's past and present. Her past was really dry and would have been better skipped. Just couldn't get more than a third of the way through. I really wanted to like this book but the storytelling could have more effective.

I am trash for pirates and stuff like that so I was so excited to start this book and it was everything I wanted it to be ! I loved the romance, the setting and I loved Mary Reade I thought she was so much like what we know about her.

This book unfortunately feel very flat for me an did not work at all. I love pirates and pirate history and this just did not work for me

The Unbinding of Mary Reade is an example of a precursor to feminism movement in a fictional history. The author spins a tale about Mary aka Mark Reade, who embarks on a vessel disguised as a man in search of a new life. Exposure is a constant threat that Mary has to contemplate, especially since at sea there is nowhere to run.

What is this book about, really? It’s a glimpse into the previous millennia, where women hold an extremely limited role in society. Rather than about transcending expectations, Mary Reade is offending social, cultural, and religious norms when it comes to being a woman. On top of that, the author adds an LGBTQ+ twist by having the main character attracted to another woman. It’s a struggle both within the characters and on the outside.

In this book, men are generally portrayed as scums (by modern standards). There are some scenes where men make loud, vulgar comments about woman apparently for the woman’s benefit, and it is striking how this is still unchanged in our time. It makes me think that these attitudes are remnants of times when women are valued much less than they are now and went by unappreciated. During these times, their jobs are basically to satisfy men’s lust, bear children, and carry out household chores. Their role in the economy is limited to making clothes, bartending, and working in illegal brothels.

What I don’t enjoy in The Unbinding of Mary Reade is that Anne Bonny plays the role of a helpless damsel whose life revolves around how her man treats her. It probably doesn’t live up to the pirate’s reputation. I mean think about it, for a female pirate to be written down in history (which, at this time, I assume is written by men), she’d have to be able to make it on her own and command the respect from fellow pirates who are mostly men. However, in The Unbinding of Mary Reade, Anne Bonne pretty much sleeps with the boss to get to the top.

This just book just didn’t work for me. I had trouble connecting with the story and characters. That being said Imliked the premise behind the story.