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| A lovely cover that hides the horror. |
I'm not normally shocked or totally squicked by a bodice ripper. I laughed during Savage Surrender, with its callous asshole hero Garth McClelland and the rape-a-minute plot. There have been other books with gang rapes and less-than-stellar heroes that had me riveted to the plot and characters. (Hello!Stormfire?) But this book is the first one to actually creep me the hell out. I only kept reading to see if Coulter would pull out a cheap trick at the end to make the horror that had come before all puppies and kittens. (She did.) To top it all off, the non-existent plot was boring as hell.
First off, the hero Anthony Welles, Earl of Clare. Where to start with this guy? Anthony has all the attributes of a psycho stalker. He has been watching Cassie for years. He knows her habits. He is so observant of her that he can read her moods and thoughts. He feels that he is the only one who can offer what she wants and needs. He is the only one able to fulfill her as a person and as a woman.
Are you dialing the cops yet?
Add to that the fact that he was in love with her mother in his pubescent years. After Cassie's mother died and when he could, he infiltrated Cassie's home by sending his cousin incognito to be Cassie's governess. The cousin taught Cassie Italian and "groomed" her to be suitable for him when the time was right.
Even ickier? Cassie was five when his cousin arrived to start this little covert operation.
Which makes Cassie's pregnancy 6 months or so after her abduction by him so hilarious because when she accuses him of deliberately doing that to her, he says that he couldn't have possibly planned that.
Of course not. You only banged her every day from Day 2 (except for those Aunt Flow days). I mean, pregnancy? How did that happen?
I think he should get a job in SPECTRE or Quantum, or whatever they're calling it these days. Omniscent string-pulling is right up his alley.
He's not all Powercock awesometude, though. His plan was to court Cassie during her Season in London and win her that way, but when her childhood friend Edward returned from serving overseas in India, she called off her Season and was going to marry him right then and there. Oh no! Since Cassie has forced his hand, he has to kidnap her and show her how much he loves her! He has to! (Yes, that is indeed his logic.) Just pause for a moment and reflect. His entire adulthood has been focused around marrying Cassie (completely pathetic in itself) and he has brought all his resources to bear on achieving that end without her knowledge or that of her family. And he feels completely justified in his aim and his methods. That, dear readers, is what creeped me the fuck out.
Cassie has a natural reaction to being kidnapped, at first. Sheer terror and anger. How dare he presume to know what she wants and decide what's best for her? (And, seriously, the smug coming off Anthony at every turn was intolerable.) But from the get-go, he insists that she be naked when she goes to bed and otherwise demeans and orders her about at every turn, all the while insisting she has the free will to realize they're made for each other. Look, I usually carp at heroes that are sensitive metrosexuals in centuries past, but I'm not all that fond of dead mother-loving, kindergarten-age daughter-obsessing control freaks either.
But Cassie feels her body respond because Anthony is such a peerless lover and she thinks she's an immoral whore and, as far as I can tell, sort of resigns herself to him. From that seed a love grows that only comes out into the open when she gets gang-raped by hired thugs and Anthony seems peachy-keen in comparison. (Again, as far as I can tell. Coulter tended to emphasize fingers probing wet folds and brushing dusky nipples over any psychological attention.)
I didn't much care for Cassie, either. Horny, spitfire virgins? Yeah, no thanks. If Coulter had perhaps given her characters something to DO, maybe I'd have liked it more, but she didn't. In the beginning in England, Cassie and her fiancé Edward paw each other, then she gets abducted by Anthony and the action is confined to his yacht where they fight, shag, and fight in a mobius strip, and then they go to Italy where we remain enclosed in a villa for pages upon pages with the same fight/fuck/fight cycle replayed over and over. And then Cassie runs off to New York to find Edward. Oh yay! I think. This bit about Edward being an officer during the Revolution sounds good! And this is where the story really lost me because.....
Dear Cassie,
So Edward doesn't remember that you don't like tea! But Anthony does! So fucking what? While you were growing up and Anthony was maintaining a 24/7 offshore patrol by your home watching your every movement with one hand on a spyglass and the other in his pants, Edward was in disease-ridden India preserving the English empire that you are oh so proud of, and then risking getting his nuts blown off in America. He doesn't remember you don't fucking like tea. Suck it up. And when you ran off to him for his protection against Big Bad Anthony, he screwed you before you were all sopping wet and you were all hurty for a bit afterward. Sooooooooo inconsiderate compared to Anthony! You know, Anthony? The guy who tied you to a bed and raped you because he felt you needed to be shown how devoted he is to you? Yeah, that Anthony. You stupid twat.
No love,
Me
Yes, it was the peevish harping of "But I've never liked tea, Edward!" that broke me. Apparently Cassie prefers to have a stalker boyfriend who knows so much about her that the usual "getting to know each other" is redundant and unnecessary.
To add insult to injury in this turgid little turd of shame, there wasn't even much of a plot. What "plot" there was had Anthony's half-brother and his mistress Giovanna conniving to dispose of Cassie for inheritance purposes (this is where the gang-rape/"Anthony is awesome!" epiphany came in). This "plot" was wrapped up in the last page with a letter describing how they met their end. Therefore, at least about 95% of the book was Cassie and Anthony fighting and screwing, Cassie running away to Edward and Anthony coming after her. Boring. Boring boring boring! I can take lots of WTFery if there's a plot. This one was total fail.
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| Anthony's long-lost music video |
In the course of writing this, I've pingponged back and forth between 2 stars and 1. I have no idea which one really reflects my opinion. I'll go for 2 stars because it is one of the more notorious bodice rippers out there and everyone interested in the genre should read it, for good or ill. I'm glad I did, strangely enough. But if you like to read about a couple going hammer and tongs at each other in and out of bed, and nothing else, then you might like it.
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