Wednesday, August 5, 2015

To Capture Her Heart- Rebecca DeMarino

My Rating:  2.5 Stars

Description: It is 1653 and Heather Flower, a princess of the Montauk tribe, is enjoying her wedding feast when her groom is killed and she is kidnapped by a rival tribe and held for ransom. Though her ransom is paid by an Englishman, she is nonetheless left to die in a Connecticut forest--until she finds herself rescued by handsome Dutch Lieutenant Dirk Van Buren. Torn between her affection for Dirk and her long friendship with family friend Benjamin Horton, Heather Flower must make a difficult choice--stay true to her friend or follow her heart.

My Thoughts: The writing of this book is well done and captures the historical voice well, with each characters nationality reflected in their syntax and word choice. Daily life is well described and obviously heavily researched. DeMarino is certainly gifted at creating her historical setting.

Unfortunately, I could find little about this book that held my attention. The description tells of Heather Flowers kidnapping and rescue as though it were an important part of the story. Yet her kidnapping is only ever glossed over in the book and the rescue (though I hesitate to even call it that) was only the first three pages. As well, one of the male romantic interests determined he loved her within the first two chapters of meeting her.

The conflicts promised in the description were not the conflicts present in the novel. Instead, there is more tension between Dirk and Benjamin than between Heather Flower and either of them. And even this falls to the way side as the island's issues quickly overshadow the three of theirs. While this made for fully fleshed out setting, it introduced far too many characters for me to keep track off.

To Capture Her Heart deals with an interesting bit of history that is well told. However, since the plot was propelled mostly through conversation rather than action, I found it difficult to remain engaged in the story which was told from multiple points of view.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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