Swept Up By The Sea

Swept Up By The Sea by Tracy and Laura Hickman

(Summary taken from the back book cover.) "Determined to seek his fortune, Percival Taylor leaves behind his sleepy hometown and sets out to become a legendary pirate. It's the only way to win the heart of the beautiful Tuppence Magrathia-Paddock, who has mistaken him for a rogue out of one of her romantic tales. Percival eventually finds himself captain of a broken-down ship, complete with a crew of reluctant pirates, a jilted fiancee, and an old professor with a secret that could kill them all. Set sail for treasure and romance!"

The quote I read on this book said, "A delightful read....It's Pirates of Penzance meets Princess Bride." by Heidi Taylor of Shadow Mountain Publishing. I love both of those so I was very excited to read it. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to those standards. I had to restart it 4 or 5 times because I couldn't get into it, and there are so many characters that I couldn't remember who anyone was. I didn't love the writing style. I thought it was difficult to read, and like I said, I kept having to go back and reread pages to figure out what was going on. I didn't feel a connection to any of the characters, and didn't think the character development was very good. Unfortunately, I just didn't like this book. I had to force myself to finish it for my review today. Had I not had this review scheduled, I would not have finished this book. Sacrilege, I know. And it doesn't happen very often, but I just wasn't interested in this book at all. With about 100 pages left it finally got kind of exciting, but by then I was disinterested and really didn't care. It did wrap up all the loose ends nicely, and everything did come together in the end, but getting there was difficult.

It was clean, though. No profanity, intimacy, or violence.

Rating: PG+

Recommendation: 13 years-old and up. I don't really think a 13 year-old would be interested, but it's clean enough for her to read.