I love Johanna Lindsey's older Mallory books so I had really high hopes for this one. I kept reading reviews that said things like "the Mallorys are back!" but I was disappointed enough that I was barely willing to give this three stars. It starts out pretty wonderfully, with the heroine Judith and her cousin/best-friend Jacqueline (the tomboy daughter of ex-pirate James Mallory and is referred to as "Jack" by pretty much everyone) checking out a ruined house while visiting relatives. The two girls mistake Nathan Tremayne, a smuggler using the ruined house, for a ghost and can't help coming back every year to see if they can find him again. Nathan ends up working his way onto James Mallory's ship to complete a bargain with the authorities while Judith and Jack are headed to America to make their debuts. Judith is honestly very unremarkable. She's nice but I barely remembered her name after reading the book and certainly won't remember it a week from now. Nathan, a smuggler with a family to protect, was intriguing and sexy. The tension between him and Judith was romantic and funny, typical Lindsey and thoroughly enjoyable. Unfortunately, at the very climax of the story, Lindsey chooses to put Jack in a situation that Nathan must rescue her from. Jack is a great character but she overwhelms the far less interesting Judith in every way. And by throwing Jack in a situation just when things were getting tense between Judith and Nathan, it totally disrupts the flow of the story. I think Lindsey is trying to set up the next book between Jack and the pirate she refers to only as the Bastard but it ruined any build-up in this one. The writing is still solid Lindsey and the hero is sexy and compelling but between the forgettable heroine and the flawed plot, I was left feeling very disappointed.