Thanks to Goodreads for letting me read and review this book I received from one of their giveaways. This is my own honest opinion and thoughts on the book.

I was surprised and excited to win one of the Goodreads giveaways because I've never won one before and I was especially interested in reading and reviewing this book.

This is a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo that is gender-bent with murder, mystery, and deceit. I haven't read The Count of Monte Cristo recently but I remember the basics and most of the story. I didn't even think about The Count of Monte Cristo at all while I was reading this except once or twice when I stopped my reading and remembered this was a retelling and sat down to think and compare things a bit and saw that it was a gender-bent retelling of the story.

I think I like this alright, but then again I like the Count of Monte Cristo too - they each have their positives and negatives to how the versions of the same story are told. I like Amaya as The Count/Countess of Monte Cristo role and Cayo - I love the two of them together.

It's very much a revenge story and Amaya has a hard time moving on and letting go of things in her past in regards to her mother and all the time she was stuck on the ship serving the idiot captain as Silverfish. Both Cayo and Amaya have a lot of secrets and things they find out in regards to their families that are hard to deal with and have to come to terms with eventually.

It isn't a fantasy read if you're expecting that, it's more of a contemporary retelling with pirates, ships, the sea, a port town and the like also with the battle between classes of poor and rich that is brought out in these types of stories a lot.

After Silverfish/Amaya gets free from the Captain, she teams up with the mysterious stranger, Boon that she saves and they make and enact a plan of revenge on Cayo's father to bring him down and along the way Amaya and Cayo begin to care for each other and that makes things complicated then the truth comes out with some unearthed secrets and they find out what Cayo's father has done, Cayo finds out who Amaya is and about Boon and their plan of revenge then Amaya finds Roach, one of her friends from the ship she serves on, who disappears when she teams up with Boon and they board a ship to head to another place to see if they can help Cayo's sister, who is very sick.

It, of course, ends as they are going to sail away to try to see if they can help Cayo's sister and with unanswered questions and things falling apart on a bit of a cliffhanger. I'm undecided if I will read the next one or not, but this was a bit of a letdown from the hype it received and what I was hoping for and expecting to read.

If you're curious then check it out, it may be that it just wasn't as much my type of thing.