SURRENDER OF A SIREN by Tessa Dare

SURRENDER OF A SIREN by Tessa Dare

I have to confess that I put off reading this book a bit because it involved ships, pirates, and the high seas. I realized recently I'm not much interested in reading books with that setting. I have no idea why these things happen. For years I enjoyed to varying degrees ships, sailing, pirates, the whole nine yards. However, my tbr is currently littered with "high seas" tales that I pick up and put down with a sigh. Fortunately I ignored that impulse when I continued reading Dare's back to back releases. I've learned (finally!) there can be wonderful surprises when you take a chance.

By now you've figured out that I really liked this book. While a ship is certainly the back drop of this book, the characters are so strong that the fact a good portion of the book is spent on a ship didn't bother me at all.

Readers of Ms. Dare's first book GODDESS OF THE HUNT will remember heroine Sophie Hathaway as the beautiful prospective fiancee of Sir Tobias Aldridge in that book. Sir Toby is the young man Lucy, the heroine of GODDESS, believes herself to be in love with. However, it is to Sophie that Sir Toby proposes.

The hero, Benedict "Gray" Grayson, is a man on a mission. Trying to keep his family afloat in the wake of tumbling sugar prices and his father's death, he takes to privateering, and, when the war is over, to legitimate commerce.

In this story Sophie, who loves to write letters and make up stories, decides to take up a fictitious name and travel as a governess to a place where she remembers her friend Lucy has family. Sophie burns bridges and her engagement with Sir Toby by leaving letters to Toby and her family making up a story about running away with her painting (music?) instructor all in the name of true love. Sophie's plan is to lay low far from England and her family's interference until she turns 21 and comes into her inheritance.

Sophie doesn't count on meeting Gray, who after he saves her from a mauling in a tavern, turns out to be the owner of the vessel she hopes to sail on. Gray's brother and partner captains the ship, while Gray tries to resist the temptation to take back his duties as Captain. Only his love for his brother and his determination to keep him his partner help him resist. That leaves the only passenger on board, the luscious Sophie, as the single diversion to focus and obsess over.

Filled with full bodied secondary characters and a rich texture of the times, this book really surprised me. With an excerpt of LADY OF PERSUASION in the back of this book, I'm anxious to get my hands on it knowing that Sir Toby gets a chance to even the score with Gray when he sets his sights on Gray's sister.

My Grade = B+