Name: A Pirate's Heart
ISBN: 9781602820401

Catherine Friend

When rare book librarian Emma Boyd searches for a pirate's long-lost treasure map, she learns the hard way that pirates still exist in today's world - and some modern pirates steal maps, others steal hearts.

A Pirate's Heart

grace richards

this book looks like it should be full of adventure and romance, however it falls short on every level. 

we first meet pirate captain tommy who’s obviously a woman and she’s had to fight for her position. we spend the 4 opening chapters with tommy where we get a sense of her life on the boat and we see her rescue some slaves who have been dropped in the ocean. just as we are getting into that storyline, we switch. we start following a first person narrative of a librarian named emma who is interested in tommy’s life and is looking for her “secret treasure map”. so we then spend 4 chapters with her and her new PI friend before we swap. 

the whole book follows this sort of style of about 4 chapters in the past and then 4 in the future until the last 12ish chapters. this totally ruins the flow of the book as just as you’re getting invested in one storyline, you get whiplash as you are thrown into another. 

similarly, because of the two storylines it’s leaves the characters underbaked and not as fully fleshed out as they could be. there aren’t really any stakes to this book either and it sort of feels like someone wanted to write a pirate book with all the intrigue and mystery of the genre but didn’t quite know how to make it different from what’s already out there. 

the two romances are also disappointing and i found myself not rooting for either couple. they lack that je ne sais quoi that couples should have and it means that the story falls apart because the key sub-plot of this book is clearly romance. 

there are some great sapphic pirate books out there from pre-2010 but sadly this isn’t one of them.

Carol Bailey

Summary from the Bold Strokes Website:
“Four women, a long-lost treasure, and more than one “thief of hearts” share a destiny beyond time.
 
To foil a map thief, librarian Emma Boyd searches for a pirate's long-lost treasure map. She’s aided in her search by investigator Randi Marx, who proves to be as frustrating as she is beautiful. The treasure map Emma and Randi seek belonged to Thomasina Farris, a pirate who disappeared from the Caribbean in 1715. Did Captain Tommy steal an entire treasure from a Spanish galleon and escape? Was she convicted of piracy and hanged by her neck? Did she die of a broken heart when she lost the woman she loved?
 
In her race to find the map, Emma learns that pirates not only steal treasure, but they also steal hearts. When Emma discovers Captain Tommy’s fate, she must decide her own as well, choosing between romance...or revenge.”

Review: 
I’m going to consider myself extremely lucky because I’ve been on a role of really enjoying the books that I have read lately. This one falls into that category as well.
I don’t consider myself a big “pirate” story girl but the story is told from two points of view: The reader gets to experience the story as it unfolds during Tommy Farris’s life (the Pirate Captain), and the reader gets to follow the present day story/adventure of Emma Boyd as she tracks down Captain Farris’ hidden treasure map and the person who has been stealing rare maps from libraries. Eventually, the stories intertwine as Emma pieces more of Captain Farris’ life and eventual death together.

Once I would start reading I found it difficult to put the book down because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. From my perspective, work gives my brain and patience enough of a daily workout so when I sit down to read a book, I want to be engaged and entertained. I want to relax and “see” the characters come to life in my imagination. What I don’t want is to feel like have to exert effort to get through the story. (I’m reading three of those books right now. Pick one up, read a bit, go to a different one. I want to finish them I just can’t stay focused on them for long periods). “A Pirates Heart” was perfect in this regard.

A Pirate's Heart

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