Reforming a pirate is silly fun. ( )

I don't know. This was uneven for me. I never really believed Silence wanted to be with Mickey or that Mickey would just abandon his pirating for a nice house and wife. Also, he had zero connection with his daughter - that was never rectified by the end. I don't see Silence, Mickey and the babe as a family unit so I just didn't buy their HEA. Also, every fucking sentence is, "his man voice/body/scent/presence/hair/nostril/wtf-ever" or "her womanly/feminine face/smell/tongue/glare/wtf-ever. Jaysus - in every instance, womanly/female or many/male could have been removed and the sentence would be fine bc it's all contextual anyway! This series is interesting - and has shining moments - but the writing fails under the weight of the themes the author is attempting to explore. I will continue the series, because I do think it is doing more for me in regard to English-type histroms than others have. ( )

I ended up liking Michael and Silence. Watching them grow to open up to each other without any filters was a slow but sweet thing to watch. Seeing Michael fall for both Silence and Mary Darling was also beautiful. I really enjoyed this and recommend listening on audiobook. ( )

Excellent tale, another Georgian romance. A wonderful, fascinating character in Mickey O'Connor, river pirate. He undergoes a true transformation from selfish reckless charmer into a much more lovable character. Silence Hollingbrook has her life changed as well, from being the widowed supervisor at an orphanage to having a family of her own.

Another view of life in St. Giles, the gin-ridden slum of London in the 1730s. ( )

The heroine drove me absolutely batty for at least the first half of the book, but the hero and story overall was good enough that I'm giving it 4 stars despite that. Without giving away too many book details please allow me this short hypothetical.- It's all well and good to imagine some scenario where a poor stable boy spits in the face of the king and gives some snappy quip and all the peasants cheer- but that shit just doesn't happen! At any point in history! The boy would fear for his life, the peasants would be afraid of retaliation (if not just as hostile to the boy as the rich might be) and the king would have the boy seized to be drawn and quartered before the kid could wipe his mouth on his sleeve! We generally don't curse out our bosses to their faces or taunt people with guns either, *because this concept is so simple and intrinsic to our survival instinct*. There's a huge power imbalance in this book as well, but the heroine throws any fragment of caution to the wind at every turn. If a notoriously cut-throat kingpin has you AND YOUR INFANT CHILD you don't go about poking the bear every chance you get!!! Book readers can assume she won't be beaten to death or see her baby killed before her very eyes, but certainly she couldn't know that! And even if she suspected complete immunity, which she doesn't seem to, are you really SO CONFIDENT in that notion that you would risk your very lives?? Just for your own sense of pride? No! And, especially for the time, women weren't encouraged to be defiant and mouthy to men in general! Especially in a religious home, like hers, men were the heads of household and you were taught to do your best to serve them and obey. Again, readers can see from his point of view chapters that he wouldn't harm them, but she thinks he's entirely black hearted, (even after she's given him just cause to punish her repeatedly and he hasn't, you'd think she might factor that in...) so she would have no reason to assume their safety even as she defies him- (sometimes in front of his entire pirate crew!), at every opportunity. It's not like a crime lord's control over his men comes partially from their fear to defy him or anything... =/ There's also no way so many of his people would risk his wrath to bring her food when she was going without *only due to her own stubbornness* and hadn't even gone a day without food either! If his power over them were really so flimsy they would have mutinied long before. So he would have had to order them to sneak her food, in some attempt to feed her while saving face, but though he mentioned his awareness of it I never saw confirmation that it was at his order. He'd been set up as dangerous with even the largest men afraid of displeasing him- and he ended up trying to wrangle some respect from them like a substitute teacher. =/ And she's basically a guest in his home yet later she tries to shame him for the expense of his food?, and then up and changes his menu?? What a dick thing to do really... Also, she shirks nearly all responsibility for the devil's bargain she made in the first book. It was impossibly dumb to think she could ask a huge favor of a pirate and there wouldn't be any concession on her part! And he could have asked much more from her (or forced it!) and she would have had no recourse but to give it, in order to save her husband's life. But every time she thinks of it she acts like he was the one to seek her out, and that she got nothing out of it for her pains. Have a little self accountability! She does show some sense and strength later on, but it didn't outweigh all her prior utter foolishness in my mind. I would give the hero 5 stars, appeal, dimension, growth, etc! And her a 2. =/

On a re-read I was still highly annoyed with the heroine, but I had warning of it I guess and didn't feel quite as frustrated with the book as a whole. Seriously though, she's poor and a widow, she has no business acting like a spoiled princess in someone else's home, even if that person wasn't potentially very dangerous. Best case she's a guest, worst case she's a captive, either way she's way out of line! I enjoyed the hero at least as much as I did on the first read though, and he makes up for a lot. =) ( )