Upon Your Honor by Marie Lavender

Upon Your Honor - Marie Lavender I loved this book so much! SO MUCH!!!

I know that I have probably mentioned this before in a previous review of mine, maybe not, but ever since I was a little girl I have had this love for ships. Sailing ships. I love the terms for everything. I love the idea of being able to traverse oceans and leading a band of miscreants, and just the camaraderie that happens when you sail for months at a time. Sure there are bad days too when it comes to the sea, but I just absolutely  it. (Okay, so my kinds of ships are normally only in books, and the groups I'm talking about are mostly pirates, not a those on a trading ship like the men on La Voyageur, but it's kind of the same principle, right?)Anywho...that was one of the things I absolutely adored about this story. The fact that most of it takes place on a vessel of the seas.

I also loved the characters, mostly the supporting characters, my favorite being Gabriel's father. He just seemed like such a sweet man, and his daughter Adrienne was a bit of a firecracker in comparison. Gabriel's mother was also very sweet when it came to Chloe, and you could definitely tell she was a strong woman, considering what she herself went through for true love.
It also doesn't hurt that she was a redhead...REDHEADS UNITE!! *ahem* Sorry, kinda slipped out. And Gabriel was a redhea....AUBURN. Sorry, his and his mother's hair is auburn. The characters are kind of berating me for not getting that right. Now...where was I... Oh yeah. I loved that I could sort of relate to those two because of hair color.

While Chloe was an integral part of the story, without her running away from her fiancĂ© there would be no story, she definitely wasn't one of my favorite characters I have ever read. I liked her, don't get me wrong, I just sometimes felt a bit annoyed by the fact that she was SO proper, SO well brought up. At one point I just wanted her to spit on a bad guy or her fiance, just once. I was completely rooting for that to happen. That would have made my day. But other than that, she was a good character.

All in all, this was really great story. I freaked out a bunch of times while reading it, especially near the end, where...well, you'll have to read to find out. This reaction always indicates to me that whatever I am reading has to be good. At first I couldn't figure out how the other books were connected to this one, since this is the first I have read from the series, but it made me smile when I was able to connect all three with characters that I was pretty much introduced to in this second book. It reads very well on its own, but the other books are definitely on my to read list for the future.