Customer Reviews

Gentle Pirate

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book twenty years ago, and bought it again recently, as I remembered it.

For readers that like their hero to be a true Alpha Male--protective down to his pinkie--this is the book for you.

It was also nice to read about a hero that wasn't physically perfect: Simon had an amputated arm.

Jayne Ann Krentz has changed her writing style over the years, but I still love this story.

Simon Kendrick has been brought in to reorganize the company Kirsten Mallory works at and shows his intimidating nature in their first interview. But Kirsten isn't afraid to lose her job and as a professional librarian has written up exactly what her department does for the company.

There's no doubt that Simon is alpha male all the way and he spends a good part of the book ordering Kirsten around. However she's not a doormat - she left her first husband after three months rather than taking any more abuse, and she's made a good life for herself. Simon knows he's in a pretty bad position coming across the way he does, and also being an ex-Marine just like her now deceased ex-husband. It's cute the way he tries to maneuver his way into her dating life by showing up at the same place she is out on a date and inviting the couple for drinks.

All in all, Kirsten starts of knowing that she is not afraid of Simon. She's just going to have to find out whether, no matter what they go through, she'll feel like she'll never be afraid of him.

Wow, I would never have expected this kinda of story from Jayne Castle. I really love her work in all of her incarnations so I was really surprised by this story. The guy was a little too macho and the female character a little too the little woman(literally). She had spunk but ended up always going his way. I really got pissed at this one. Although it wasn't as bad as Bargain with the Devil in one scene it was almost a date rape.

Word to the wise be careful when reading her earlier works. It will make you pissed off and wanting to yell. That being said it was a well written story just really annoying characters

I've only started reading romance in the last year or two, and if this is an example of what romance books were like in the eighties, I would have hated them then.
The heroin is completely under the thumb of the various men in the story, and in particular under the 'hero's' - it seems more like an abusive relationship than a love story: he decides everything and she gives a token protest and then surrenders.
If you're interested in seeing how romance has evolved in the last quarter century, then read it, but that's about the only thing it's worth reading for.