Many thanks to Harlequin & The Hive for the preview. All opinions are my own.

This was a fun witchy pirate book. I absolutely pictured Ben as Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean the whole time. This has tons of action, magic, high stakes, a quest, swashbuckling, and a slow burn enemies to lovers romance that becomes scorching.

I loved the found family of the pirate crew, and how they specifically tried to help women and enslaved people. There’s tons to love here, and I think people new to romantasy will especially enjoy it if they’re coming from a historical romance background.

I will say, I did try to start with the audio, but I was NOT vibing with the narrator. She didn’t do a good job of differentiating between characters and voices. I switched to the ebook and flew through the book after that.

I’m entertained and engaged enough to want to continue the series to see where we go next!

I ended up rating this book a 2.5 star. The writing definitely wasn’t bad, it just didn’t speak to me. At no point did I connect to the story or the characters in it. I never really understood how magic worked in this world. But maybe that’s because the main character didn’t know everything either. To me, the relationship felt like it came out of nowhere. They seemed to always have a thing for each other even when they had no reason to trust one another. I mean immediately letting this stranger (who is meant to be your enemy) sleep in the same room as you alone? I definitely didn’t see the twist at the end coming! Made no sense to me. I think this book will definitely have an audience of people that like it, I’m just not apart of it.

A day of cleaning and packing and I decided to dive into a pirate romantasy!

I really liked that this was ‘different’ from the usual take on a pirate book. An all-female pirate crew with a male capture. In general, the book is very female-forward which I loved! The romance in this book is super slow burn, in my opinion. While you can assume who, the way it unfolds is not what I had originally expected when diving into this.

Just a warning, there’s a cliffhanger 😉