Hello everyone!
I'm just off the Arrow / Flash crossover for this season, and I'm so happy with that fact. Also happy that they promised to make it a yearly event because they can see that fans enjoy this type of thing. So yay to that!
But I also had to think about which book to write into the blog post, and I've been bouncing in the sci-fi world for a while now so I figured I'd try something else again.
Into my trusty notebook we go, and I remember that, whenever I'm out of ideas as to what to read, or better whenever I honestly just need a break from every other story and whatever else happens in there, I turn to Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, because she tends to supply all my needs for some romance, history, and a general relaxation.
At least, it was until I got to the book that established her as a historic romance writer and introduced this genre to the world.
Now, this is the first part in the Birmingham family saga, followed by other books but I only read the short stores titled The Kiss and Beyond the Kiss. I'll touch on them at the end of this review, I promise.
The story is about a young girl, Heather, who lives a pretty poor life with her aunt and uncle on a farm, and is plucked from there by the promise her aunt's brother makes that he will make her a teacher. Instead, he wants to rape her - she stabs him in self-defense and runs off. Mistaken for a whore, she gets picked up by a valet and is deposited into Captain Birmingham's cabin on board his ship, where despite the fact that NO still means NO, no matter what century you live in, she gets raped. Returning to the farm, she is later revealed to be pregnant, and Birmingham is forced to marry her (and then he's surprised she doesn't want to have sex with him again afterwards). He takes her to his family home in America, where she also gets to meet his younger brother (more on him later), and basically, everyone else around her is nicer to her than her husband is. He's just snippy and prissy most of the time, except when anyone tries to flirt with her or whatever, then he gets possessive. There's a lot of miscommunication between the couple (seriously, if they had said TWO SENTENCES to one another, our lives would be a whole lot less painful), but of course, as this is a romance book, they resolve it, and she gives birth to a baby boy. Now, all is not sun and roses because Birmingham has someone who was pretty much engaged to him prior to Heather's arrival and she's basically an unsavoury character who keeps being disgusting. The problem is, she ends up dead, and Birmingham is accused of it. It's later found to be untrue, as a tailor who has wanted Heather for a while now has been murdering women around town (and carefully placing the blame on the wrong guy). The book does have to have a dramatic climax (yet another) with Heather almost raped again, but her captain saves her, and they live happily ever after from there on.
To touch on the other two short stories, they center around the younger brother, who runs into a girl one day in town and buys her to rescue her, immediately professes he's in love with her (and he actually believes it) and marries her. Before they can get down to business (for some reason, she's willing and she's in love with him too after knowing him for ten minutes), a gang invades their home because the leader has allegedly bought the girl first, and they shoot her now-husband. She thinks he's dead - he's not. He teams up with big bad brother and they go smoke the bees out of their hive, to get the girl back. Problem number two: another woman arrives claiming that she's pregnant, and despite the fact that everyone knows it can't ever be the man's child, his wife decides she's not going to sleep with him until she can trust him.
They get their own novel, but I kind of stopped reading there.
Want to know why?
I think it's obvious. And what I want to know is how did this pave the way for romance novels? It pretty much makes rape something that's okay, not to mention marrying the first man who plucks you off a street. I didn't really see any kind of connection between the characters (aside from obvious lust) and it boggles the mind that they would be confused over such simple statements as NO (and other similar ones, while we're at it).
I did not enjoy these books as much as I usually enjoy Woodiwiss' work. Normally, she's insightful, with really good plotlines and interesting twists. In this, her pioneer work so to speak, she falls woefully short of anything but confusion for me.
Especially as a lot of people nowadays are so up in arm about these kind of sensitive topics, I'm not sure it would get much positive propaganda anymore, if ever it did.
xx
*image not mine
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