LoveSpell, $5.99, ISBN 0-505-52367-1
Historical Romance, 2000
Another story that depicts pirates as yet another bunch of crusty lovable old men sailing the seas and never rape, pillage, or plunder. Fine. I love Disney cartoons, and I can take the idea of Care Bear pirate crews.
But when I’m presented with a 19-year old woman who doesn’t even seem to know anything about her body, life, or her sexuality, I really get the creeps. Call the Jailbait Rescue Hotline, somebody.
When Sir James Noble Avery captures the pirate ship of the infamous Sharkee, he decides to spare crusty doctor Mr Bonny and ship lad Jem. And when he stumbles upon Jem bathing naked, he realizes that Jem is in fact Annie, Sharkee’s daughter. For 19 years Annie is raised as a boy, and she has no idea how a woman is supposed to be or even function. (I really wonder how Sharkee explained her menses. If she has had her menses, hmmm.)
James start finding such alluring innocence sexy. So what is he to do? He is engaged to Lady Olivia, who is of course cold, dull, and not at all the sweet innocent pure lass that Anne is.
The plot soon runs out of steam and comes to a dead standstill. James keep lusting after Annie, and Annie acts like a complete not-there-upstairs woman, presumable to make me laugh. It is one thing to read about an “infamous and evil pirate” whose crew seem to do little but to sail the ships and discuss new expletives, but it is another thing altogether to drag a story with little meat on and on.
Who’s Annie? I have no idea. She has no memory of her father’s pirate past (maybe she’s locked in a safe), she doesn’t seem remorseful over her father’s death, and she is quick to discuss her breasts or strip before James. In short, acting like a five year old trapped in a woman’s body. Who is she? She doesn’t even have much character development at all, so she remains Lolita-meets-Punky Brewster from page 1 to end. Her sex scenes with James, needless to say, makes me want to scream “Pervert! Child abuse!”
James is a nice guy, especially with his charming discomfiture and incomprehension of everything feminine, but his getting all horny over Annie is disturbing to me. Doc Bonny has some fun lines, but all in all, Capturing Annie is just like a Disney cartoon with sex. And sex and Disney cartoons mixed together would bound to result in something either really bizarre or distasteful. This one isn’t even interesting enough to be bizarre.
