Sea of Roses

I thought I was in my romance era but the last few books I've picked up have been proving me wrong at every turn. I was excited until about 50 pages into it. And then around page 200 I was starting to slog my way through this. I'm not sure where the exact disconnect happened for me but our love interests sparked no joy in me to want to keep the pages turning. For me when I'm reading romance, an actual plot is a nice addition, but for me it's more about the relationship building between the characters to enhance everything else like the plot. I love to watch a romance build between two characters, the stolen glances, the rising tension, the will they won't they scenarios... and I felt none of that with this book unfortunately.

We start off the book with Alister having his ship attacked, and seeing a young woman as a stowaway on the opposing ship that's now sinking. He saves her and brings her aboard his, all to find out that the woman is named Rosetta and it was her plan all along to play the damsel in distress so she could actually take over his boat as she herself is a Captain. Rosetta is a strong character, and she was written excellently as a strong character. As we get further in the book we learn more about her motivations as to why she's a female captain amongst Pirates and what her goals are. It's all believable.

Alister despises Rosetta right off the bat, and it's rightfully so as she did steal his ship and his crew. This first book doesn't delve too much into who Alister is outside of a captain. He seems to be guided by some words his mother had said to him about helping those in need, etc. Outside of that we don't really learn much about him. He sort of blended in with the rest of the characters, if I'm being honest.

This book is written in third person, and I'm usually not a fan of it all. I still wanted to give it a chance as the beginning of the book started off strong for me. However as it continued I felt that it created a severe distance from me as the reader to the characters. It was hard for me to see why Rosetta and Alister were even remotely attracted to one another. Her relationship to a couple of her closer crew members in comparison to Alister was written the same. No real sense of emotions played into their exchanges. There were no moments that had me desperate to have more scenes with them around each other. I prefer my romances to have smut in them but I can't stand them if the characters are as flat as Rosetta and Alister are. I felt no tension or angst between Rosetta and Alister to make those smutty moments exciting or rewarding.

There's a plot point in this that was used repeatedly throughout, which had me knowing exactly how this book was going to continue and how it was going to end. We have Rosetta trying to attain her ultimate goal which is to get to another ship (I won't share why to save from spoilers). In order to do that, she keeps tricking Alister. She tricked him into taking over his ship. She drops him off at a port. He steals the ship back, and drops her off at a port. She tricks him in order to regain the ship. It was repetitive to a frustrating degree. They never gain a common ground and if it appears they do, one of them lying or outright tricking one another deters that entirely. And all the trickery was awkward to read on about considering we're removed from it. We don't know why Rosetta or Alister does something until it's already happened and then they explain how they pulled it off or why they did it. I'd like to feel a part of it instead of a bystander. So all they had truly was enjoying having sex together.

Which while Alister respects her during the couple times she says no to sex, there is a scene when he low key guilt trips her into sucking his dick. I wanted to put the book down at this point. Specifically, he fingers her to orgasm, and he's starting to put his dick in her when she says no. He agrees and stops but then tells her that she's going to have to “take care of him” and suck his dick. Rosetta didn't show enthusiasm to do so, in fact her response is “I already sucked you” ... I'm supposed to be turned on by this? Lol

crossing fingers that I have a win soon but I am very happy to be done reading this