The Determined by Rachel Rueckert

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A groundbreaking novel of historical fiction based on the real experiences of two of the Golden Age of Pirates’ most infamous women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who dared to subvert the rules and gender roles of their time.

1721, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Captured, convicted, and pregnant, twenty-three-year-old Anne Bonny faces the gallows. When writer Captain Charles Johnson enters the garrison, she strikes a deal: she’ll tell this opportunistic fool her story if he sends a doctor to her friend, Mary Read, who’s battling prison fever.

Prior to their arrest, life at sea had offered Anne and Mary freedom that few women knew. Anne, born into scandal in Ireland, seeks home and elusive safety in South Carolina. Discovering the opposite, she makes a bitter bargain for emergency passage to the Bahamas.

Across the Atlantic in England, Mary confronts her own limitations as an illegitimate daughter. She sneaks into a merchant crew, disguised as a cabin boy. But when war sends Mary into the cavalry, she meets a challenge even she might not rival.

When their paths collide in Nassau, a notorious “pirate den,” Anne and Mary find kinship aboard the Revenge, the fastest ship in the Caribbean. With the governor out for blood, every raid brings more risk. From the high seas to the depths of a Jamaican prison, Anne and Mary must navigate impossible choices, each determined to taste freedom again.

The Brief, Brutal Brilliance of Bonny & Read

The following ratings are out of 5:
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌎🌍
Character development: 😋🙂😁😎
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Solo Narration

Audiobook Review: The Determined

Author: Rachel Rueckert
Genre: Historical Fiction
Narrator(s): Polly Lee

Characters, Background, and Plot Dynamics

The story opens in 1721 with Anne Bonny—twenty‑three years old, pregnant, and imprisoned in Jamaica as she awaits execution. Her only hope arrives in the form of Captain Charles Johnson, a man who claims he can help her if she and her fellow prisoner Mary Read will share their life stories for his book. From here, the narrative slips into Anne’s memories, beginning when she was just eight years old in County Cork, Ireland. Though illegitimate and far from an heiress, Anne was already defying expectations: wearing britches, skipping lessons, and fighting the local boys. Her home life was turbulent, marked by her mother’s bitterness and her parents’ constant arguments—especially after a brick shattered her father’s law office window, prompting the family’s move to the Americas. Despite her rebellious streak, Anne had a sharp mind and a talent for languages that her parents never fully recognized.

Mary Read’s story unfolds in parallel. Also pregnant and awaiting the hangman’s noose, Mary is far more ill and weakened by the brutal prison conditions. Her past begins in England at age eleven, when she discovers she is not the boy “Mark” she has been raised to be. Her mother’s deception—intended to secure financial support from a distant relative—collapses, forcing Mary into work as a cabin boy. Her life becomes a series of reinventions, each shaped by necessity and survival.

Highlights

• In Charlestown, South Carolina, Anne Cormack meets sailor James Bonny and marries him out of convenience rather than love. It doesn’t end up quite like marriage of convenience trope you see in many romance books.
• The supporting cast is surprisingly rich, like Anne’s friend Ellen, whose fierce condemnation of the slave trade exposes the brutal economic engine of the colonies. Her scenes add moral weight and historical grounding.
• Though Anne and Mary begin the book in the same dire circumstances, their paths to piracy are strikingly different. Seeing how each woman’s life shaped her choices is one of the novel’s most compelling elements.
• Mary Read emerges as the more relatable and sympathetic of the two. Her resilience, adaptability, and emotional depth make her chapters especially engaging. Anne, by contrast, often feels like a reckless teenager stumbling into trouble—though she ultimately shows remarkable strength when it matters most.
• The writing is consistently engaging, and the emotional beats land with real force. Several scenes brought me to tears, which is always a sign that a story has truly connected.

Limitations

• Anne’s naïveté after her marriage to James Bonny feels at odds with her otherwise bold personality, especially when she becomes infatuated with Calico Jack.
• James Bonny’s attempt to reclaim his “husbandly rights” is deeply unpleasant to read and left a sour taste, even if historically plausible.
• The brevity of Anne and Mary’s actual pirating years was surprising. Historically, they were active for one to two years, but the novel compresses this into mere months. While there are moments of swashbuckling excitement, I found myself wishing for more time at sea.

“Surely being a woman means you have a natural ability to scour chamberpots or serve extra shifts cooking in the galley”

“To be a woman is to be a liability, dependent, vulnerable, trapped, blamed, hunted.”

Narration

The audiobook is performed by Polly Lee in a solo narration. Her voice wasn’t an immediate favorite, but she handles accents and character distinctions well. Though I would have preferred dual narrators—especially for a story with two strong female leads—her performance grew on me as the book progressed, ultimately enhancing the emotional depth of the story.

Final Assessment

This audiobook offers a vivid, emotionally resonant reimagining of two legendary women whose lives were far more complex than their mythologized reputations. The dual narrative structure highlights the stark contrasts between Anne and Mary—one impulsive and fiery, the other grounded and quietly courageous—while still honoring the fierce determination that defined them both. Despite a few character choices that felt uneven and a shorter-than-expected focus on their pirating years, the story is rich, immersive, and often heartbreaking. Combined with a narration that strengthens over time, this is a compelling and memorable listen that brings two extraordinary women out of the footnotes of history and into full, vibrant life.

I voluntarily listened to & reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts & opinions are my own.

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