Customer Reviews

Capture My Heart

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This book would have made more sense as 2 seperate books in a series. Only the last 40% of the book is actually really about the story that is described on the back cover.

If you like over-confident, domineering men who keep their women in harems and do not think they should be allowed to think for themselves, then you will like this book.

As part of his parents' plot to make money, a young English boy, Alex, and his Aunt Catherine are kidnapped and put in a ship that is over taken by pirates. They end up in Algiers where the dey decides to keep Catherine in his harem and raise Alex as his son. Catherine tries to escape with Alex and get back to England, but fails.

18 years later Alex, now known as Serad, has grown up to be a pirate and a man just like the dey, much to his aunt's distress. He raids a ship and finds a young woman on board. And, as history repeats itself, he takes her to Algiers and sticks her in his harem. The difference is that Catherine can't watch another woman face the same fate as her, so she helps the girl escape back to England. Everyone meets up in England, love is found, and everyone ends up happy.

Everybody gets a happy ending. I thought it was well-written. Kind-of nice that all the loose ends get wrapped up in the end - maybe a little bit improbable. I wish the villains had suffered more. Someone as evil as Vivienne deserved a page or two with details about her comeuppance. I thought the heroine (Tori) could have been a little more likeable. It was a fast read.

Why do romance novels have to be so full of cliche? I love a good romance (Especially if pirates are involved!), but it's always the writing that lets them down. Too many corny lines and overused descriptions. The editor of this book needed a sharper eye - at one point all of Tori and Jonesy's clothes are removed so Tori has to don a 'native' dress, yet on the next page Tori is back in the dress she's borrowed from Jonesy! I know I'm fussy, but it's these kind of things that throw me out of a story. I confess to skim reading parts of the book too ... The blurb led me to want to read about Serad-Alex and Tori's relationship, but Tori didn't even appear in the book until p195! I understand that all the backstory about Alex, Catherine et all was necessary, and I'll admit I enjoyed the Malik/Catherine romance, but I think the blurb miss-sold the book. Had I been told it was an 'epic' spanning twenty-odd years and involving more than one romance, I'd have been more ready to settle in for the duration. Having said all that, I liked the characters, the over-all epicness and the romance elements. The baddies weren't all bad and the goodies weren't all good. The plot wasn't bad either - just convoluted enough to intrigue, although I confess to having the ending all figured out fairly early on as the twists were signposted rather obviously.