Title: Found at Sea
Series: Tales of Fate: Book One
Author: Jaclyn Osborn
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 267 Pages
Category: Fantasy
At a Glance: This one comes highly recommended for lovers of a pure and unapologetically romantic tale of love and redemption.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Captain Kellan Flynn is cursed. All men fear him, and even more so, they fear what the myths make him out to be. The demon of the sea who sails with no mercy and who won’t hesitate to slit a man’s throat if challenged. But there is more to him, and the curse upon him will someday consume him whole. Unless he finds the key to breaking it.
Fletcher has always dreamed of adventure, of sailing the high seas. But he’s never even left his town of Helmfirth. He spends his days atop his favorite hill overlooking the sea and strumming his lute, wishing for another life. He spends his nights working in the tavern, listening to sailors weave tales of adventure he yearns to experience for himself. That is, until pirates make port and enter the tavern one night.
After being press-ganged to join the crew, Fletcher is both afraid and intrigued by what awaits him aboard the Crimson Night. And it is aboard this legendary ship that he finds something he never expected to find: a pirate captain who awakes desires he’s never felt.
Captain Flynn is captivated by the auburn haired beauty, but he doesn’t want his wickedness to taint someone as innocent and pure as Fletcher. Fletcher knows the captain is dangerous, and yet he can’t stay away.
Life on the sea puts every man to the test, and with time running out, sacrifices have to be made. Can two men who are so different ever find their happily ever after?
Review: “There is no greater adventure than one of the heart.”
Captain Kellan Flynn, notorious pirate, has earned every bit of his notoriety on his ship the Crimson Night. Kellan’s avarice and heartless cruelty led him to commit atrocities for which he is now paying a steep price, a curse that will come to fruition on the event of his thirtieth name day—if he doesn’t find the answer to breaking it. But the clock is ticking, and the captain is no closer to solving the riddle that will save his life.
Author Jaclyn Osborn has created a thoroughly charming and enchanting world in Found at Sea. This is not a historical novel but a true fantasy world filled with magic and merfolk, prophesies and pirates who sail the high seas, and it’s a sweet and tender romance novel as well. Kellan must find a heart to break his curse, but little did he know he’d lose his own heart to Fletcher in the process, a nineteen-year-old innocent whose kindness and compassion is matched by his unwillingness to let Kellan get away with living up (or down) to his nickname, demon of the sea. They are fire and water and the yin to the other’s yang, and the way Osborn builds their relationship is the stuff of fairy tales as well as a hero’s journey to a happily-ever-after. There are moments fraught with heartache and hope and in the bargain, readers are treated to two men it was impossible not to adore.
One of the things I learned about this author’s writing, after reading her brilliant Axios: A Spartan Tale, is that a particular turn of phrase—one that reaches out from the page and grabs the reader by the heart—is a hallmark of her storytelling. There are several such passages in this novel that spoke to the romantic in me, each one of them swoonier than the next, and I loved some of the tropes she rolls out here too—age gap, enemies-to-lovers, and second chances among them. There is also the internal struggle Kellan faces, one he brought on himself through his own actions that he must now face up to and pay the price for. The fact that he is at first willing to use Fletcher as a means to an end is part of his journey to redemption, and, of course, Fletcher is the external struggle—he becomes Kellan’s conscience in an inadvertent way, because Fletcher makes Kellan want things he’s never wanted before; he makes Kellan want to be a better man who’s worthy of Fletcher’s admiration and devotion.
Fletcher himself has a backstory meant to tug at the heartstrings, and it succeeds. On the verge of being homeless once again when the story opens, he is and has always been a dreamer who has longed for adventure. He has heard the tales and legends and thinks them merely that—stories meant to entertain, shared by men in a tavern over a pint—but he soon comes to discover that those tales have a basis in truth. When he encounters Kellan, first in a whore house and then again in the tavern he has recently been cut loose from, the captain propositions Fletcher—actually, he leaves Fletcher little choice—to sail as a crewman on the Crimson Night. Little does Fletcher know that he’s caught the captain’s eye not because he’ll make a good pirate but because there’s something about him that Kellan can’t resist. Fletcher challenges Kellan in a way no man has ever dared, and that fortitude comes from the fact that Fletcher refuses to bend to Kellan’s will just to please him.
I loved being swept away in this full-fledged, swashbuckling romance. Kellan being caught up in a war between his conscience and his heart and his desire to live was complemented to perfection by Fletcher’s fire and tenacity and desire to help the man he’d come to love. Fletcher becomes the key to unlocking the answers Kellen needed to gain redemption. The additional cast of characters are robust and developed as much as they need to be to move the story forward. There is one character in particular, Alek, who becomes Fletcher’s best friend and brother, and who plays a hugely significant role in this story, not only to Fletcher but to Kellen as well. There is a legendary magic at play in the foundation that has been laid out here for Alek, and it promises to be special.
This one comes highly recommended for lovers of a pure and unapologetically romantic tale of love and redemption.
You can buy Found at Sea here:
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