A Pirate for Christmas - Anna Campbell

A Pirate for Christmas was the holiday romance selection for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' group.  Like most Christmas-themed historical romances, it's a novella rather than a full-length novel.  Also like most Christmas-themed historical romances (and Christmas romances in general, regardless of time period) it relies on love at first sight to get everything going--probably because the short length doesn't leave as much room for relationship and character development.

The two main characters here are Bess, the daughter of the vicar of her rural village, and Rory, who has just taken over the title of Earl after his older brother's death.  There's a rumor rampant in town that Rory is a dastardly pirate, but we know from the book's description that he was actually in the Royal Navy.  When Bess visits the manor to obtain the donkey that always takes part in the Christmas play (Daisy--Daisy was probably the best part of the book) she encounters Rory, the two fall in love at first sight but are of course unable to express their feelings for each other, and go edging around each other as Bess starts reorganizing Rory's house and gets him to give her Daisy and his own participation in the Christmas play...all for the price of a kiss, of course.

As I mentioned before, there's not a lot of room for plot or character development here.  Bess and Rory spend most of the time mooning at each other from afar with all of the village folk trying to push them together, and then there's an extended scene where they conveniently get stuck in a cabin in the woods during a snowstorm together.  Rory wants Bess and Bess wants Rory and and Rory spends a lot of time pursuing Bess but not really wanting to do anything about it because he wants to marry her first (because that's what she deserves) but also not really doing anything to move in a marriage direction.  But of course that's where it all ends up, and then there's a weird time-jump to the honeymoon where the ~sexy times~ start.  Honestly things probably would have been a bit more interesting of Rory really had been a dastardly pirate instead of a misunderstood navy captain, but meh.

Christmas romances in book form are, essentially, the same as those cheesy holiday movies that you see on TV all the time at this time of year.  They  might be cute, for what they are, but they're not particularly good.  This book follows that trope exactly.

2 stars out of 5.

Untouched - Anna Campbell

Okay, the romance reading challenge strikes again!  This time, we're examining the "virgin hero" category.  I read a couple of books trying to fulfill this, finding that I had been misled, the issue of the hero's virginity doesn't come up, etc.  So I went to a list!  Unfortunately, most of the books that I was interested in, I had already read, and I really try to read new titles for my reading challenges.  But Untouched was on the list, and the library had it, so it became my choice.

This is an interesting historical romance because it doesn't take place among ton society, or a country manor, or any of the usual settings.  Instead, it takes place in a walled compound with some grounds, a garden, and a small cottage, and remains there for most of the book--there are only a few segments that take place beyond it.  Why is this?  Because the book starts with the heroine, Grace, being kidnapped and delivered to the "mad" Matthew, Lord Sheene, to "entertain" him on orders from his uncle.  But Matthew doesn't want to be "entertained" even though he's been locked up since the age of fourteen, when he was the victim of a bad illness that gave his uncle, Matthew's guardian since the death of his parents, the room needed to make a grab at the family fortune and influence.

It's established pretty quickly that Matthew isn't actually mad, though he's understandably pretty ornery and doesn't want to let his uncle "win" by sleeping with a woman said uncle's goons provided.  Why this would be letting him win, I don't know; you can have sex with someone you're locked up with (as long as they want to have sex with you!) and still want to escape, the two conditions are not mutually exclusive unless, apparently, you're Matthew.  As far as heroes go, Matthew wasn't exactly my favorite.  He's an outright bastard to Grace, flip-flopping between believing her about her origins (or what she shares of them) and accusing her of being the worst sort of whore (which is problematic for other reasons, but now is not the time).  He's nasty and has none of the charm of most historical romance heroes, until they sleep together, at which point he quickly becomes an amazing lover and a very charming individual.  Because Sex Magic, I guess?  And he swears that he loved Grace at the first instant he saw her...despite being downright awful to her for so long, which, really, does not seem to indicate instant love.  He does demonstrate instant lust, but definitely not love.  However, the two seem to be hopelessly confused in this book, which even Grace admits at one point.

As for Grace...she was kind of vanilla.  She had a bit of an interesting background leading up to her kidnapping, but her own actions mostly include being victimized by people, wearing scanty clothing, and pining over a guy she's convinced she can't have even though he only wants to be with her.  She doesn't even want to escape from her confinement unless Matthew comes with her.  I didn't actively dislike Grace, but there was nothing that made me want to really root for her except a general distaste for Matthew's slimy uncle and his goons.

Matthew and Grace undeniably had physical chemistry, but beyond that, there wasn't a lot of development of their relationship; as I mentioned before, Campbell tries to later justify this with a "love at first sight" explanation, but that is not how it reads.  I would have liked to see a little bit more of the "getting to know you" phase of the relationship, some banter, something between them other than lust disguised as love.

Overall, this was an okay book.  It didn't have the same feel to it as most historical romance books, which was interesting--different is always interesting--and I commend Campbell for that, but it also lacked some of the spark that I look for in historical romances.  Would I read Campbell again?  Eh, maybe.  Still undecided on that front!

2 stars out of 5.