Steel by Carrie Vaughn

Jill is in love with fencing but after losing a very important game she retreats in the Bahamas with her family. There she finds a tip of a broken rapier in the sand and realizes it's a 300 year old piece of history so of course she holds on to it. After an accident, involving a boat and some crazy waves, she ends up on board a pirate ship, at the time where the rapier tip came from.

This is the perfect read for people like me that love pirates and good swordfights. Jill is thrown in the middle of a pirate's everyday life and along with her we learn all these bits and pieces about how a pirate ship worked, the pirate honor and swordfights. I loved every single thing we got to learn in this book and there was plenty. Jill was a great main character, dying to get back home and struggling with her new life, knowing that she is not pirate material. All the secondary characters were great too. I loved the crew. There was Captain Cooper, a fierce pirate queen, Ade her right hand, Henry a cute pirate that Jill had a little crush on and then there were people on the crew that weren't that good, they are pirates after all. But the one I did enjoy the most was Captain Cooper. She was fierce and kick-ass and had a very tragic past, still she had her tender moments and everyone from the crew loved and feared her at the same time.

This book is filled with sailing, swordfights and ship raids as someone would expect from a book about pirates. There is the light romance between Jill and Henry but I kind of saw them more like good friends than anything else. This book is not about romance it truly is about the pirates and their lives, and how going through all of it changed Jill, and that's why I loved it so much.

I recommend this to anyone who loves pirates and wants a fast, action packed book that will teach you something in the end.