Ah yes, the first in L.A Meyer’s ship-faring, sailor girl series. I actually have this series before, and by read, I meant skimmed. So while I knew the basics of the plot, this is my first time actually reading it, and I enjoyed it very much.

Mary is a poor girl from the slums of London, put out on the street after the Dark Day when her family dies. After running with a gang of street urchins and beggers, she decides to join the ship, HMS Dolphin in order to have a more permenant shelter and reliable food. All disguised as a boy, Jack Faber, because this is the 1700s after all. Can she make the Deception last?

What I found most enjoyable is the very distinct, period accurate voice Meyer crafted for Jacky with lots of cockney slang, improper grammer and “me”s. He did not make Jacky more understandable to the current era, we are brought down to her stream of consciousness. She is very much a regular girl and learns along with the other sailor boys about naval etiquette and other nautical bearings, she’s not a master at anything. So even though we may understand things happening around her like the threat of sexual assault and her growing puberty/period, she doesn’t. Which makes the Deception much harder for her to maintain.

However, she’s still relatable. She’s emotional, she knows she can be cowardly and a showoff, while wanting a peaceful life onboard. She learns as she goes, and as Meyer wrote in the book chat, she takes everything as a learning experience no matter how mundane or hard the job is, which everyone can learn from.

He also makes very compelling characters like Jacky’s ship boy Brotherhood, and her crush, James Fletcher (another thing that makes the Deception very hard to maintain). He is the rich boy to her poor girl and yet it is very sweet how she cares for him from afar.

This book is veyr much for high schoolers, and period accurate as it frequently references brothels, sex, anti-homosexuality, drinking, gore and murder as one would expect in such a rough place as the high seas. It’s also period accurate in Meyer has interest in sea shanties and folk songs so they’re featured quite a bit.

Very good first book that tips readers’ toes into Jacky’s wild life of adventures on the sea.

4 stars