For me, Kissing the Captain was bad. It was mind-numbingly, throw-against-a-wall bad. While many historical romances are gloriously cheesy and I adore them, this romance was not ‘so bad it’s good’ – it was just bad. The dialogue was clunky and false, no one behaved in an even remotely plausible manner, the hero was a jackass, the heroine vacillated between being a kickass woman and a doormat, and the villain was cartoonishly one-dimensional and relentlessly fat-shamed.

Here’s the plot: Lilly’s father dies, leaving her a prosperous farm on the condition that she share the land with someone else — someone she’s never met but who is named in the will. Apparently Lilly has spent her whole life on this farm without learning anything except that it’s important to sow seed by hand because of emotions. The story alternated wildly between claiming that she can take care of herself and claiming that she’s completely helpless.

The will doesn’t say anything about marriage, but everyone in the book instantly interpreted “share the land” as “marry the dude.” This was never questioned. They arrived at this conclusion so fast I had whiplash. Wouldn’t it have been more likely that “share the land” implied co-ownership of the estate? They didn’t have to live on it together. Maybe her father thought that a man would be able to access the legal and business world with more ease than a woman – a realistic concern, given that the book is set in 1879. Maybe her father was simply a sexist asshat who figured Lilly needed a babysitter. Lilly’s friends think that he was trying to arrange her happiness, which makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Whatever, everyone goes, “OMG we have to find this dude and start sewing your wedding dress, and it’s a great idea and so exciting.”

BY COMPLETE COINCIDENCE, the very guy, whose name is Ricardo (he’s Spanish) comes riding up on his black horse at the very moment that Lilly and the lawyer are done reading the will. You might be thinking that later on we’ll discover that it’s not a coincidence, but nope. After never having shown up at the house EVER, he comes riding by on the exact day that Lilly’s father’s lawyer reads her the will.

The rest of the plot involves Ricardo trying to win Lilly’s heart while they fend off attacks from one of her scorned suitors, whom Lilly is repulsed by because of his weight. Oh, he’s also a jerk, but Lilly makes it clear that she’s primarily repulsed by the fat. So, you know, I pretty much hated her, and I hated Ricardo, who is a macho asshole, and I hated the villainous scorned suitor, who is truly a jerk as well as a wannabe rapist. Seriously, all of these people are horrible.

There’s only one moment in the book that seemed authentic. Ricardo and Lilly have just had sex for the first time (the book is strictly fade-to-black on the sex scenes) and he thinks his troubles are over and that now Lilly will quit her seamstress work and devote herself to making babies. Lilly gets really pissed about this, and they pout at each other, but then they actually have a very honest conversation about their different backgrounds and expectations. It’s the one time I felt like I was reading about people as opposed to hot tempered paper dolls.

There is one other thing I liked about the book, which is that it’s a multicultural story set in California, my very own home state, in 1879. Lilly is African American and Portuguese, and she lives in a predominantly Black community. The idea that these people could have a prosperous farm together is at least reasonably plausible – certainly as plausible as most other historical romances are, and it’s always lovely to see some of the diverse history of California represented in fiction.

A quibble: interracial marriage was illegal in California in 1879, so that part of the plot doesn’t hold up. Normally I’d give that a pass. Since Lilly lives in a predominantly black community, and everyone likes Ricardo, and Ricardo is described as being pretty dark himself, I’d think a church marriage that lacks legal sanction would be believable, would hold up within the community, and would constitute a happy ending. It’s also possible that Ricardo could legally identify himself as a person of color on the marriage license, but at that time people with Spanish ancestry were considered white, and no mention is made of him altering his identity. Unfortunately, the whole plot is contingent on the marriage being legally binding, and it wouldn’t have been.

Ultimately, this book doesn’t fail for me because interracial marriage in California was illegal in 1879. It fails because of the fat-shaming, the stilted dialogue, the inconsistent characters, and the fact that no one in the book responds to any given situation in a plausible way. I’m fine with the marriage of convenience plot, but in order for it to work the reader must be convinced that the marriage of convenience is actually convenient and necessary. In this story, it comes out of nowhere. Normally an inclusive romance set in post-Gold Rush California would be right up my alley, but this book just didn’t work for me.