Ha! I love this cover and it’s the one that is on the book I currently own. Look, the reason why this one has such a high mark from me is that it’s a pirate romance. Come on. The main reason why it didn’t hit 5 stars for me like the latter books is that after a while it felt like a lot of stuff got handwaved away. Also the book drags in parts. This was a fun ride though. You also get a scene with prior characters, Christina and Lyon in this one.
“Guardian Angel” follows the Marquess of Cainewood, called Caine, who is determined to hunt down the pirate Pagan who he believes murdered his brother Colin. Colin he finds out later on was employed secretly by the “Crown” and Caine is determined to pretend to be Pagan in order to lure the real one out. However, he is approached by a young girl who wants to hire him to kill her. The young woman, Lady Jade, believes she is going to be murdered soon and doesn’t want someone else to do it who may hurt her in the process. Of course, Caine, decides he will keep Jade safe, and then the book follows the two of them as Jade’s hiring of Caine (as Pagan) is revealed.
Jade was such a kick to me. I do feel a bit sad about how her character kind of went “blah” in the remaining books in the series though. She got married and became much less interesting. I don’t want to reveal too much in this one, but I enjoyed reading about her upbringing, and also why she had such nightmares.
Caine was an interesting character in this, wanting to revenge himself on the person he believes murdered his younger brother. And I thought it was interesting to have him fall for Jade first and tell her how much he loved her. I think in most of Garwood’s books the opposite happens (the heroine realizes she loves the hero first).
There’s also a plot point dealing with Caine’s stepmother that actually made me smile a bit. No spoilers, but I liked how that was dealt with. Most of the book at times was pretty funny to me. It’s very much a whose on first thing going on for a good portion of it.
Though I found the writing to be good, I will admit after a while I started to get bored. Garwood repeats a lot of things in order to show both sides of things via Caine/Jade and I started to skim after a while.
The ending had a nice surprise and I enjoyed how it was done.
I also read this for Cannonball Read 14 Book Bingo. This fits the following bingo circle:
- Snake: A book about snakes; snakes have positive and negative associations – a character can be a snake if they are a liar, but snakes also represent creativity, transformation, fertility, and healing; that book on your TBR that you’ve always been afraid of!
- I think this fits because both Caine and Jade are lying about a whole lot of things and they both do in the end heal by the end of the book.
