I picked up High Seas Stowaway because I was looking for something different and was intrigued by the setting. It starts out in 16th century Venice with our hero and heroine forging a fragile bond of friendship despite their disparate backgrounds. Balthazar Grattiano is the son of a wealthy and powerful lord, and Bianca Simonetti is the daughter of a lowly fortune teller. It all goes to pot once his father kills her mother. She flees Venice, and then the story cuts to seven years later to find her running a tavern in Santo Domingo, the seat of Spanish power in the New World. Thanks to happy coincidence, she's reunited with the hero, who in the intervening years has left behind his privileged life in Venice in order to make his name as the best navigator and ship's captain ever to sail the seven seas. (He’s not a pirate, mind you. Just a ship’s captain.)

Bianca still has the hots for Balthazar, but because of their history, she talks a lot about being his enemy and makes vague references to a desire for revenge. Her supposed hatred for him is never fully developed or articulated, however. Nor does the revenge plot progress far beyond Bianca mooning over Balthazar and jumping into bed with him pretty much instantly. This makes the constant reminders of the great abyss separating them and other such chasms as wide as the sea not only repetitive but annoyingly disingenuous and over exaggerated. The plot is also improbable and kind of cobbled together, with a pseudo pirate who also wants revenge on Balthazar for something Balthazar never did. Far worse is Bianca’s decision, in accordance with the title, to stow away on Balthazar's ship - without any clear purpose in mind. She mentions finding answers or settling a score or something, but it really seems like overblown dramatics, and an excuse for some more boinking.

Neither Bianca nor Balthazar have much depth to them. There's a lot of introspection, but neither character manages to go anywhere with their thoughts, which are stuck in a loop of clichés. Nor is there sufficient communication between them - Bianca's worry that Balthazar might have another family tucked away somewhere is particularly annoying and ridiculous. It would be easy to ask him, but she doesn't until very late in the story. Balthazar also whines a lot about how terrible he is because of his evil Grattiano blood. In a word, emo. He and Bianca spend most of their time trying to convince me of powerful emotions that aren't actually there. And in the meantime, nothing really happens in this book. I was expecting a lot more action and adventure. I’m even more disappointed because McCabe writes pretty well. I like her descriptions of Venice, Santo Domingo, and the sea. Some images are really beautiful. I just wish that, with such readable prose, she could have told a better story. As it is, the book never manages to come together as nicely as it could have, considering its original premise. The back blurb advertises “pirates, passion and danger,” but there’s little of any of that to be found in High Seas Stowaway. ( )