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.