What a Pirate Desires
by Michelle Beattie
Release Date: December 2, 2008
Publisher: Berkley
Book #1 in the Sam Steele series
Number of pages: 308
Hardcover
Source: Melcat
Historical Romance/Pirate M/F
Rating: R
Read 8/29/19 to 8/30/19
Only Luke Bradley knows the secret of his fellow pirate Sam Steele: Sam is actually Samantha, a woman driven by revenge.
Though Sam sails her stolen ship under a pirate flag, there is no creature more loathsome to her than a scalawag. As they journey across the unpredictable Caribbean Sea, Luke finds that making a criminal pay for his sins is second to the quest to win Sam’s heart.
I recently read this author’s Cowboy Up, her first foray into contemporary romance and my first experience with her writing. Since I enjoyed that book I decided to look for one of her historical romance books since that’s her wheelhouse. I really can’t recall if I’ve read a pirate book before, but if I have it’s been quite a long time. So this was an experiment of a sort, to see if this was a genre I’d be interested in reading more from.
Although I like how this book starts, and I definitely felt the spark between Samantha and Luke, the first half of this story was a bit slow for me. Interesting and still kept me wanting to get back to reading when I had to put it down, but I kept waiting for certain things to happen and they seemed to be taking to long to occur. The good news: the second half of this story flew by for me.
The concept of this story, the idea of a pirate with a secret identity out for revenge, is wonderful. I also loved the progression of Samantha and the story of how she came to be a pirate. I actually wish we could have gotten a bit more of that back story, but even without it I could understand her motivations and her desire to protect those around her so fiercely.
Overall, I liked this book. There was room for more depth for sure, but there wasn’t any overwhelming feeling of missing anything. From what I can tell, this is one of this author’s earlier published works. The story is tidy and well written. From reading her most recent published work I can say she has learned to add more depth to her story and characters, so I will be continuing this series to see how it goes.
All In Good Time 