In the first book in this series, Mary “Jack” Faber pretended to be a boy so she could join the crew of an 18th century frigate. Eventually, her secret is discovered, and in this book, she has been kicked off the frigate, and sent to a boarding school to learn how to be a fine lady. While Jack is still a delightful character, this book loses much of what made the first one so fun.
The first book worked for me because it was an exciting tale of life on the high seas, fighting pirates, and surviving on deserted islands; it had some great characters, and the friendship and love amongst them; and there was always tension with Jack’s secret being discovered. This second book loses most of these ingredients. Instead of the high seas and pirate battles, the story mostly takes place in a boarding school, largely focusing on petty squabbles and jealousy amongst school girls; other than Jack, almost none of the characters from the first story appear in this second one; and Jack’s secret is now well-known, so there’s not much tension.
So you get a young-adult novel that’s well-written and reasonably entertaining, but much of the uniqueness and charm of the first book is missing. I may give the third book a try, as hopefully, that one will return to the high seas, but if it remains land-locked, I may have to abandon this series.
