Twelve-year-old Maribel Cordova, daughter of a Spaniard with a questionable background, is brought by her father on a voyage across the ocean. When their ship is accosted by a privateer ship helmed by the infamous captain Jean Beaumont, Maribel decides she wants to be a privateer too. But Beaumont's ship is not destined to remain unhindered, and Maribel is left with only her memories of her time on the ship until years later, when a series of events lead to a chance encounter between Maribel and the captain.

There was a lot going on in this book, which proved to be its downfall. I was really into the first part. Maribel reminded me of Anne from Anne of Green Gables, and I appreciated the friendships she so quickly cultivated. Several of the smaller side characters I really liked all the way through the story. However, it was difficult to see the captain in a sort of fatherly capacity to her, knowing that this is a romance story, and that based on the (just utterly terrible and confusing) synopsis of the book, this 12-year-old girl and the 20-something captain are going to end up falling in love by the end of the book.

Still, the captain was interesting, and I was curious to see how it would all play out. But then in part 2, we have developments in the captain's life and developments in Maribel's life that sort of coincide, but not really, and that end up bloating the story far too much. I think the book would have been better overall if the captain's side of things was the focus. Add to that the lackluster development of romantic feelings between the two main characters, and the feeling I was left with at the end of this book was..."meh." I did like it more than the previous one in the series, but I'm still hoping for better in the books to come. ( )

This is the second book in The Daughters of the Mayflower Series from Barbour Publishing. You will recall I shared the first book, The Mayflower Bride, in a review back in February. I must say the covers for this series are beautiful!

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
A 12 year old girl named Maribel suffered the loss of her mother and grandfather and her estranged father came to take her away from the only home she had known. They boarded a ship only two days after Maribel got the news of her loss. The ship, the Venganza, was a ship of intrigue… some also called it the Ghost Ship. Once they set sail it was not long before the ship was attacked. Maribel’s father was cast overboard and drowned. Maribel was knocked unconscious in the attack. When she woke she found out she had been taken and cared for by the shipmates and the captain, Jean Beaumont. The plan was to care for her until they found a suitable place to leave her.

Maribel was a spirited bookish girl who quickly took to the seafaring life. She had spent time reading books on the swashbuckling adventures of famous pirates as she great up and saw it all as a great adventure. The captain of the ship seemed very young to be in charge but he commanded great respect from the men in his employ. Captain Beaumont was a man with a mission and a treasure trove of secrets. He had surrounded himself with a great band of men who would give their very lives for him.

Just as Maribel was settling into her new life aboard ship and endearing herself to everyone around her the ship was attacked by the French. As she sat perched in the “look out” reading a book and enjoying an impending storm she was suddenly cast into the sea alone and adrift by a cannonball that hit the rigging. As she was fading in and out of consciousness two of the crew members from the Ghost Ship found her some time later. Their only safe option was to take her to an island with an orphanage run by nuns that was nearby. They knew they could leave her there in good hands. She spent the next 11 years there as an orphan and then as a teacher to the children that came after her.

Those years Maribel spent on the island played tricks on her memory. She relived the life on that ship in her mind as if it were a dream… tidbits came back to her over time and she wondered if it was all just her imagination…. what happened to her captain and his crew… her friends… those who helped her through the loss of her entire family? Would she ever know if it was real? If it was would she ever see those men again? She had so many questions and needed answers.

WHAT I ENJOYED…
Maribel was a charming character! She was an avid reader with an adventurous spirit. She was unlike other young ladies of her time and was not sold on the ideas society had about how young ladies should behave. The Captain and his crew were unusually kind for a bunch of privateers and had a real soft spot for the young girl. The story took place between an island in the Caribbean and New Orleans, Louisiana during the time of it’s French occupation. The connection to the Mayflower was found in Maribel’s mother, Mary Lytton. We see that information given on the first page of chapter 1. The author shares a chart at the beginning of the book to show us her family line. The book is also a Christian fiction with an element of faith throughout. There was adventure and chivalry as well as a bit of intrigue and twisty plot points toward the end. It is a gentle read and would be a good YA book as well as adult.

WHAT I DID NOT LOVE…
The pacing of this book was a letdown…. we spend half the book trying to build the story and another fourth of it setting the scene 11 years after Maribel is left at the orphanage. The adventure and intrigue part of this book did not even begin until about 5 chapters from the end. There was a whole lot of building up to something and then a non-climactic bit of summary to wrap up where they were going. While it is a sweet story with it has a great deal of predictable plot but there were some surprises and that kept me going. I had to see what happened to Maribel after all she had been through.

I give this one a 3 out of 5 stars.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing and was under no obligation to post a review. ( )

I enjoyed this book and found the main characters lovable and interesting. Maribel is smart and courageous and ends up living a life unlike most children at that time. I will look for more books in the series in the future. ( )

I fell in love when I read the first book Daughters of the Mayflower series The Mayflower Bride and am so excited to be reviewing the second book in the series, The Pirate Bride.

We begin the story with Maribel Cordoba, a 11-year-old girl that is grieving the recent deaths of both her mother and beloved grandfather. The only family she has to speak of is her Spanish father who has brought her aboard a ship full of privateers and Captain Beaumont, a man that is harboring a vendetta for the spaniard. Cordoba murdered both his brother and his mother years before and Captain Beaumont is ready to settle the score. A brawl aboard the ship leads to Maribel becoming an orphan but she is quickly "adopted" by the many of the privateers and Captain Beaumont himself.

When the ship is attacked Captain Beaumont believes that the young Maribel is killed during the battle and is racked with guilt for years. You find out that Captain Beaumont is in fact Jean-Luc Valmont from the prominent Valmont family of New Orleans, Louisiana. No one knows that both men are actually the same person or that Maribel in fact survived the battle and has been growing up at an orphanage on a small island in the Caribbean.

I first want to say that I fell in love with the main premise of the book. The action was intriguing and I finished the book quite quickly. The characters were well developed and you can't help but fall in love with Maribel's tenacity.

The only fault I found with the story was the age difference between Jean-Luc and Maribel which, if you read other reviews, I am not alone in my opinion. When the story begins you see Captain Beaumont (Jean-Luc) more like a father figure to the fatherless Maribel. He is incredibly protective of her and his heartbrokenness from losing her is almost palpable. When the story fast forwards to Maribel as a young adult Jean-Luc is also quite a few years older and yet the age difference is not a major concern not only between the two of them but for any of their acquaintances.

Other than that I really enjoyed The Pirate Bride and cannot wait to read the next book in The Daughters of the Mayflower series, The Captured Bride which was just released last month. ( )

I didn't love this one as much as I loved the previous story but I did like it. Maribel, the female lead, is so much fun. Plucky, and she loves reading, pirates, and climbing trees. In the first half of the story, she is 12 years old; in the second half of the story, she is 23. (The male lead is in his twenties in the first half and his thirties in the second half.) That made the romance aspect of the story too difficult for me to realize, even though the romance technically doesn't come until the second half of the story.

This is another book where-when I thought of it as solely a historical fiction story rather than a romance-I liked it much better. I feel like I've read several of those lately.

Also, having the story set in the 1700's amid the backdrop of rocky times between Spain and France-it just wasn't as interesting to me as the Mayflower voyage. The author did a great job of incorporating real people and history into the narrative, and I love this. But it just isn't a time setting that I would seek out if I weren't purposefully reading this series in order.

Still, I'm continuing with this series because I love the idea of following one family line throughout several hundred years of history.

Audiobook Notes: I added the audio again since it is available in the Audible Escape program, and I'll keep doing this for as many as are available in this series. Sarah Zimmerman is a wonderful narrator and, while she had an accent during the first book, she did not use an accent for the main character in this one! It's so cool when narrators can switch back and forth between accents flawlessly.

Title: The Pirate Bride by Kathleen Y'Barbo
Series: Daughters of the Mayflower #2
Narrator: Sarah Zimmerman
Length: 7 hours, 29 minutes, Unabridged
Publisher: Tantor Audio ( )