Pacifica - Kristen Simmons

Initial draw: ✰✰✰✰
Character development: ✰✰
Plot/Writing style: ✰✰✰

Audiobook narration: ✰✰✰
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"For too long our people have suffered, plagued by overcrowding, disease, and lack of work. We have only just survived for too long. Now we must take the next step and thrive. Pacifica. A new beginning. Blue skies. Green grass. Clear ocean water. An island paradise like the ones that existed before the Melt. 

A lucky five hundred lottery winners will be the first to go, the first to leave their polluted, dilapidated homes behind and start a new life. It sounds perfect. Like a dream. The only problem? Marin Carey spent her childhood on those seas and knows there's no island paradise out there. She's corsario royalty, a pirate like her father and his father before him, and she knows a con when she sees one. So where are the First Five Hundred really going?"

I wanted really badly to love this book. The premise is interesting and very relevant right now, there's an introduction from the author that talks about her inspiration for the story being the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States, and I went into it expecting to be blown away. Then I spent about three quarters of the book trying to force myself to get into it. And finally, I gave up. I can't put my finger on what exactly it is about the book that didn't do it for me - more than anything, it just felt like a story that didn't quite know what to do with itself or where it wanted to go. Even when it comes to a synopsis, there doesn't seem to be a consensus, because there's the synopsis I included above, and then there's this alternate synopsis from Goodreads:

"Marin is corsario royalty, a pirate like her father and his father before him. Sailing the ocean to chase adventure is in her blood. But these days no one cares that the island town her people call home is named after her grandfather. They have a new leader, one who promises an end to their hunger – and one who thinks that girls are meant for the kitchen or the brothel. Marin knows she's meant for more than that, and with the sudden influx of weapons on the island, and rumors of a pending deal with the enemy oil nation in her wake, she knows a big score to gain the council's favor is the only way to save her people, and herself.

Ross lives a life of privilege. As the president's son he wants for nothing, but he longs for a life of adventure. On a dare, he convinces his best friend Adam to sneak out to the Docks, the site of local race riots between the poor Shorlings and the upper class. But when Adam is arrested along with the other Shorlings, and not even the president is willing to find him, Ross finds himself taking matters into his own hands. He journeys back into the Docks, ready to make deals with anyone, even a beautiful pirate, if it means Adam's safe return.

When Marin and Ross meet in dangerous Shoreling territory he sees a way to get his friend back and she sees her ticket home. The ransom a president’s son would command could feed her people for years and restore her family’s legacy. But somewhere in the middle of the ocean, Marin must decide if her heart can handle handing over the only person who has ever seen her as more than a pirate."

So...is this book about people being disappeared to a mysterious island that doesn't actually exist? Or is it about Marin finding a place with the corsarios and Ross tracking down his friend? This is a genuine question, because I read a lot of this book and I am still not sure, and I'm not convinced that Kristen Simmons knew for sure either. The plot, like these dueling synopses, was scattered, and that made it hard to nail down the driving action and actually care about anything that was going on. The characters suffered a similar fate - it wasn't clear what they were actually working toward from one moment to the next, and at times I felt a little bit like I had started reading in the middle of the book because there's so little development. Either synopsis would have made a great story, but both of them together was too muddled for me. Which is a bummer, because who doesn't want to read a dystopian novel about a badass woman pirate?