When Lyn sets off on her supposedly uncomplicated and unromantic cruise, she never dreams it will include pirates. All the 25-year-old Colorado high school teacher wants is to forget that her dead fiancé was a cheating scumbag. What she plans is a vacation diversion; what fate provides is Braedon, an intriguing surgeon. She finds herself drawn to him: his gentle humor, his love of music, and even his willingness to let her take him down during morning karate practices. Against the backdrop of the ship’s make-believe world and its temporary friendships, her emotions come alive.
However, fear is an emotion, too. Unaware of the sensitive waters he navigates, Braedon moves to take their relationship beyond friendship--on the very anniversary Lyn came on the cruise to forget. But Lyn's painful memories are too powerful, and she runs off in a panic.
Things are bad enough when the pair finds themselves on one of the cruise’s snorkeling excursions in American Samoa. However, paradise turns to piracy when their party is kidnapped. Lyn’s fear of a fairytale turns grim. Now she must fight alongside the man she rejected, first for their freedom and then against storms, sharks, and shipwreck.
My Take:
Oh my gosh, I don't even know where to start! This is going to be a hard review to write without giving away spoilers. Let's just all accept the fact that a romance has to have an HEA (happily ever after) but this one had me worrying I'd have to accept a different version of the standard form of HEA. So, here we go...
Weaver is a talented writer who knows how to pull the emotion straight from your soul. Her characters were real from page one. Never once did they feel cliche or like stock people that needed to be there to fulfill a plot device. For a moment, I thought Jori might be a stock character, but even he was his own person with a unique role to fill in the story.
I'm not going to go into a play by play summary or list the qualities of the two main characters. Just know that I cried for at least the last hour of reading. This is a good thing for me. It shows how invested I was with Lyn and Braedon's lives, not just their romance. I love romance, but this was so much more. The suspense elements and the daily struggle of surviving added such depth to the story. I can't say much more than that without giving too much away.
This was a beautifully written, tender, and heartwrenching story. I almost never give romance a 5-star rating, but this one gets it without a seconds hesitation. I'd like to give it two 5-stars for doing it while staying clean on top of it all.
1-5 scale and what it means:
1: I couldn’t even finish it / just plain bad
2: I hope I didn’t pay for this / disappointing
3: I didn’t hate it, but it was still missing something / forgettable but inoffensive
3.5: On the line between good and ok / like, not love
4: Solid mind candy / worth reading
4.5: So very close to perfection! / must read
5: I could not put it down and I’m still thinking about it! / a true treasure
Movie Ratings in relation to my review:
Clean--Hallmark movies, some kissing, no nudity, no sex on or off "screen"
PG--Some innuendo but nothing kids don't hear every day, sex is all closed door
PG-13--some language (swear words not related to sex), more talk about sex, heavy petting, removal of clothing on screen, but sex is closed door.
PG-14—somewhere between PG-13 and R. Not erotica, but at least a paragraph of on-screen sex
R--swearing (F-bomb, on “screen” sex, sometimes feels like the whole story is about the sex and not the relationship or some other plot, but not always
No comments:
Post a Comment