Reviewed by Sarah Stuart for Readers’ Favorite

Ivory Shepard, known as The Razor, narrates her own story in P.S. Bartlett’s Demons & Pearls (The Razor’s Adventures Book 1). It opens when the pirate ship, Demon Sea, attacks a merchant vessel. Not satisfied with taking her cargo, Captain Barclay commands that her crew be slaughtered. The Razor, who has travelled thus far accompanying her three female cousins with the promise of Barclay’s protection on the voyage to a new life in Jamaica, sees him for the unprincipled man he is and kills him. She is determined to settle her three young female cousins in Jamaica, and claim her own freedom to live as she pleases.

Chapter one opens with a battle at sea. With the captain dead by Ivory’s hand, another is elected. After much argument, the four girls arrive safely in Port Royal where the new captain, McCormack, offers them refuge in his own home, but is the offer as generous as it appears? His wife, Millie, an ex-whore, is not the lady she pretends to be and Ivory discovers that the fortress the captain calls home is a trap; a holding house for girls destined for sale.

Demons & Pearls is the story of Ivory Shepard, The Razor, who recounts the adventure. Demons and Pearls is an action-packed thriller where The Razor’s problems are compounded by sexual discrimination. To be a sailor, she must adopt the appearance of a man. When Captain Berman, Big Red, sees through her disguise, the sexual tension is stretched taut as a circus high wire. P.S. Bartlett has written a book that is impossible to put down. I recommend Demons & Pearls to anyone who enjoys a gripping, fast-paced story full of cliffhangers and surprises.