Miltantly Romantic

Most of my posts here will be purely in the realm of reviewing romance or romance-adjacent books I've read, or putting out thoughts on happenings in the romance community. This, though, is a little bit of background: on me, on why this matters to me, on why I believe it should matter, period.

I read my first romance somewhere around thirteen years of age, in the early nineties. It was a Jude Devereaux, I couldn't tell you which one. I picked it up for a quarter at a garage sale in my neighborhood and was hooked. In my case--and I think people have all sorts of reasons romance speaks to them--this was a book where the fact that a woman had been hurt didn't mean she couldn't have hopes and dreams. More, it didn't mean she couldn't attain those dreams.

I tried so hard not to seek out more. This was the nineties. Janice Radway had written 'Reading the Romance', but its ripples were still confined to academia, and even there, a particular sect of academia. Romance as a genre hadn't yet learned its own worth, and wouldn't even really begin to in wide circles until around 2005 with the founding of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. (More on that later.)

Rewinding a bit. I attended to a prep school in Kansas City, Missouri. I'm white, but I'm also practicing Jewish and have been out as queer since sophomore year. My high school had a significant number of weirdos which meant I could cobble together a friend group from other people who didn't fit the extremely wealthy, white, cishet protestant majority at the school. Intelligence was perhaps the foremost currency of relationships in my school, in the sense that if you didn't have it, friendships were hard to find unless you wanted to party. I was well aware I wasn't as smart as a lot of the other kids in my grade/at the school, but I was smart enough, and knew how to front as a survival technique.

I failed out of my first year of college at Columbia University. There were a ton of mitigating factors, but the hard fact is, I left before they could put me on academic probation, and it was, in part, because I wasn't smart enough to be there. I transferred to Oberlin, and fell into a deeply unfortunately timed fandom relationship with boybands. Prior to that, my fandom interests had been Highlander and X-Files. "Respectable" fandoms, inasmuch as any media fandom in the late nineties - early two thousands, particularly the slash corners of those fandoms, could be considered respectable. Like romance, fanfiction was the realm of women, and therefore it was necessary that the hegemonic structures which define what are appropriate leisure activities for the female-identified denounce it. Fanfic, unlike crafting or baking, had no tangible economically-viable product, and if women were to be allowed hobbies at all, society demanded they must be productive in ways men could understand to have value.

Popslash, as boyband fandom was called, was not respectable on any level. It was mass produced pop for brainless teenage girls (please take a moment to note the devaluation of things that appeal to teenage girls) to begin with. When you mixed in fanfic, established fandom was horrified by the real person element, and everyone else just figured I had managed to find the world's most embarrassing hobby, and acted like they were ashamed for me when I admitted to it.

In those years, instead of lying about my fandom activity, I made saying "I love the capitalist patriarchy" with a dead look in my eyes as unironically as I could to anyone who started giving me shit a way of living. I did not, in fact, love the capitalist patriarchy. Had I been older and wiser and the world much much further along in its discussion of female creation and economies of exchange I would have pointed out that me appropriating male bodies in a non-commercial community made up almost entirely of women to tell the stories that were important to me was arguably just as, if not more, radical as debating what Virginia Woolf meant for the eighty-thousandth time in an intellectual circle jerk. But the ability to make rational, well-reasoned points would come later. Oberlin and popslash simply taught me to be sharply defensive of my right to enjoy what I enjoyed.

Throughout all of this, I devoured romance books and didn't talk about that to anyone. Fandom was one thing: I had a community of women at my back who were smart as all get out, poised and professional and eloquent, letting me know there was nothing wrong with my desire to write stories using a backdrop of pre-existing characters, or, at times, worlds.

Romance was something nobody talked about. Or, rather, when it was talked about, it was by those who were mocking it. As the mid-2000s set upon us, romance was beginning to catch its stride. Women with advanced degrees who had spent time supporting themselves through a variety of other jobs and clearly had thoughts about women's treatment in the world began weaving these thoughts into the texts. The writing got sharper. Discussions around consent changed the shape of what was considered sexy. But somehow it was still rote that Jane Austens were classics, but never again should a romance occupy that space, let alone be considered something of value.

By this point, e-Books were gaining in use and popularity. One morning I was listening to the radio, it must have been NPR, I think I was on my way to my job, and by complete accident, I heard a report about the fact that with the advent of being able to download a book and not have anyone see the cover, sales of romance novels had skyrocketed.

And something in me broke. Because the sense that this thing I loved so much was people's dirty little secret upset me to no end. It was around then, 2007ish, that I discovered Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. I'd long given up even trying to find a community of other women to discuss these books with. By that time, the community was well in swing and my imposter syndrome kept me from talking on the boards themselves, but I read a lot. I was a different type of romance reader than a number of the women on SBTB. I for the most part didn't like contemporaries, and while I respected her, I'd never really gotten into Nora Roberts. Even so, for the first time, it was like someone other than Janice Radway had stood up and said, "No, there's value here."

A lot has happened in the romance scene since 2007, obviously. For that matter, a lot has happened since 2019 and the (necessary) unraveling of the RWA's power structures. It's only within the past year and a half that the New York Times has done any serious reporting on and discussion of romance as a genre. It feels, in some ways, like women like Sarah Wendell, Leah and Bea Koch, Jessica Pryde, writers like Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole, Jasmine Guillory, etc., have been underneath this layer of ice that's been keeping women who read and write romance pinned down, disrespected and dismissed, for years, and suddenly, finally, well past when it should have happened, there are starting to be cracks.

Personally, for the last thirteen years, I've been arguing that there are no guilty pleasures. For the record, I believe this. Outside of committing an actual crime, I see no reason any of us should find guilt in pleasure, whatever it is. But the real argument I've been making under that statement is that even WERE there guilty pleasures, reading romance wouldn't be one.

Reading romance, so far as I am concerned, is an act of defiance. It is supporting overwhelmingly women-identified authors. It can easily be supporting women-owned businesses. It is saying that the stories women tell have value, that our stories matter. It is acting upon the concept that women have complex lives and existences, and that doesn't mean we don't deserve happy endings. It is in fact stating, unequivocally, that we do deserve those happy endings. We deserve partners who are concerned about our enthusiastic consent and our pleasure, no matter what form that might take. We deserve lives where we are supported emotionally. We deserve for our voices to be not just heard, but listened to.

Which brings me to my final point. As I make clear above, I adore the work of SBTB, I think it created a shift in culture without which much of what has happened in romance could not have done so. I have nothing but the utmost respect for its creators. That said, I really dislike the use of the term "trashy." I get it, I do. If you insult yourself first, nobody else can beat you to it. In 2005, with where we were in the dialogue, it was a sassy, clever brand. But as much as one woman's trash might be another woman's treasure, when society says the word "trash" in reference to cultural pieces, it is a pejorative.

I am, at times, for reclamation of terms. Obviously, I self-identify as queer when lesbian is, in some ways, a more specific description. If we, as a community of readers and writers, want to reclaim the term trash in some way, maybe that's a conversation to be had. Honestly, I don't think we do. I think we want to talk about how these books, just like the women who read and write them, are not trash.

Are there bad romance books? Yes, lots of them. But no more than any other genre, percentage-wise. No more than "literature," percentage-wise.

Those books are not bad because they are romance, they are bad because their authors lack either the skill or the practice to carry off the story they are trying to tell. And there are so, so many truly amazing romance novels. Novels that create space for women's narratives where we have largely been pushed aside, novels that question our choices as a society, novels that show us the beauty of cultures different from our own, and novels that show us hope in moments when we are feeling none.

If that's trash, well. I'd best make my home in a dumpster.

This one has been sitting on my TBR for quite a while, since Aoki is digital-only and I'm not particularly good at digital-only. But having inherited an e-Reader from my father, I've embarked again on the attempt to clear out some of the stuff I can only get in this fashion.

I'd been quite interested in this one for its setting, in China during the Boxer Rebellion. Historicals set outside the UK or nascent US are not easy to find, and depending on when they were written, can be something of a gamble. This is even more true for queer historicals.

Our two leads here are Alfred, a British Marine, and Zhang, an officer in the Chinese military. The POV is entirely Alfred's, though. As a general rule, I'm not bothered by single-POV, and there's a solid reason Aoki chooses it--for the Big Misunderstanding to work, the reader has to not understand what's going on in Zhang's mind. (Which also presumes the reader doesn't understand that certain cultural concepts are at work.)

I found it uncomfortable in this case, though, since Alfred is part an army that China does not particularly want at its shores, and I was never entirely able to shake that discomfort.

The first half of the book moves fairly quickly, with Alfred and Zhang meeting in a garden in Shanghai, where Alfred's ship is docked. There's a decent amount of chemistry between the two leads, and there's very good sense of place.

The problem is that the Big Misunderstanding happens at basically 50% in, and Alfred and Zhang spend almost the entirety of the rest of the book apart. At that point, the book becomes more historical fiction with a side of pining than anything else. And, due to it being wholly from Alfred's POV, Zhang's story is entirely lost.

Further, the book ends with them reuniting/the necessary HEA, but...it's deeply unclear how each of them has worked through the problems that drove them apart. And they are not petty. Zhang conceives of Alfred as his wife or subordinate, and Alfred is incensed and hurt by that. And yet, at the end, Alfred claims to want to be Zhang's wife, and Zhang responds that Alfred is his equal. Only, again, forget telling not showing, we haven't even been TOLD the steps either of them took to get there. It basically seems to depend on a combination of "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "but you could have DIED" and...sure. But that doesn't change that the two of you have fundamentally different conceptions of partnership.

I think there's a little bit too much going on in this book, and that the romance element of it gets short shrift. This is fine, if the book isn't, you know, a romance. Unfortunately, in this case, it's a bit of a problem. 

This book is "illustrated," in that it has the author's photography throughout it, not directly of scenes that are taking place so much as a sort of conceptual visual accompaniment to those scenes.  It's very different, and I'm not sure how much it worked for me.  In fairness, I'm not a very visual person.  I don't watch much television or many movies, and I don't convert written word into visuals.  I certainly didn't dislike it, I just don't know that it heightened the experience of the book for me in the way that it might for someone who is more visually inclined.

In terms of the actual book, this is definitely something different, if that's what you're looking for.  The concept here is that we've got our Duke, Grayson, who wasn't supposed to inherit, but his male family has all managed to die and so, well, he has.  Grayson has been over in India practicing spycraft, and has brought back with him a man who is serving in the capacity of Grayson's valet even though Grayson seems to feel that's beneath him.  This character appears to be in the book for the purpose of playing the "wise Indian" at times, and honestly, every time he was "on screen" I was super uncomfortable.  I've talked before about the weird trope in historical romance of "I'm friendly with my valet, so I must not be a snob" and that's some of what's going on here, but there's also some very weird racial stuff that's just...unsettling.

Grayson is contracted to marry Cecilia, something left over as a deal between their fathers.  Grayson's father was abusive toward him, and Cecilia's father appears to hate Grayson because his friend (the father) did.  In any case, I don't think Cecilia is particularly enthusiastic about the marriage, if anything, there is a later suggestion that she is in league with her father to blackmail Grayson, but that's kind of all an aside because about a minute after going to talk with her, Cecilia hits her head and her body is inhabited by Lulu, a woman from Colorado who makes her money as a pro-Domme.

Where does Cecilia go?  Who knows?  Is she okay?  Who knows?  Does anyone seem to care?  No, not so much.  Is that more than a little disturbing?  Yes, actually.

I think part of my issue was that I had a hard time letting that go.  There are some interesting things going on with Lulu, say, the body dysphoria she's experiencing at being in another woman's body, but overwhelmingly, her reactions don't ring true to me as someone who, as far as we, the reader, are aware, is an adult who has been supporting herself independently in the 21st century.  To whit, I'm never certain why she agrees to marry Grayson almost immediately.  The text talks about her feeling safe with him, but...that's not a reason to marry someone you've just met?  And he's made it clear that there are other options for her?

Nor do I ever end up feeling like I understand Lulu as a character particularly.  For example, she has clear resistance to forming committed relationships (it's unclear that she's even left any FRIENDS behind), but we never learn why?  That's not something people just come out of the womb like.

Grayson, in comparison, is well-fleshed out, but often feels like he's his need to submit and very little more?  As though he has allowed that one "flaw" to overcome his ability to human?

I would also caution anyone going into this as an erotica, because I don't think it reads that way.  There's not a particularly significant amount of sex despite much of the main couple's relationship compatibility appearing to be sexual, rather than intellectual or emotional.  And it's fairly light on all things BDSM.  I will say, I do appreciate that LeBlanc either practices or has actually done some legitimate footwork on understanding certain SM practices that I rarely see in fictional BDSM or kink representation.

This was a book I really wanted to like, because femdom is exceedingly rare in histrom, and SM femdom even moreso, but I just never really hooked in to either of these characters, and due to that, remained distracted by issues in the foreground that were bothering me.   

This is the first in a family series by Ashley that's fairly popular amongst avid histrom readers.  We're not talking Kleypas or Quinn, but she definitely has a following.  I was interested because it was recced to me in a conversation wherein I was asking about main characters in histroms who have what we would now recognize as Autism spectrum disorders. 

I enjoyed a lot of things about this book.  Our female protag, Beth, is a widow who was a poor lady's companion until said lady passed and left her fortune to Beth, which puts Beth in a very different position that she's previously been in throughout her life.  Beth's a highly relatable heroine.  She's practical but also ready to have adventures.  She loved her first husband, enjoyed having sex with him, knows how lucky she was in both, and misses having male companionship.  At the same time, she's old enough to be fond of the independence she's gained.  When we meet Beth, she's engaged to a man with whom she feels she'll rub along well enough with.  

Ian has knowledge otherwise and lets her know.  I'm going to set aside my issues about what Ian knows about her fiancé to talk about later, since it's one of my issues with this book.  Overall, I also like Ian.  Is it not really acceptable that he has his not-exactly-valet dude look into Beth before he decides to tell her what he knows?  No, not really, but also, Ian's ASD is pretty darn well constructed, and even if his actions are still not particularly acceptable, within his history and the way his mind works, they're definitely understandable.  

(His valet sits in that weird position that happened a lot in late 2000's romances where the main male character had a lower class valet with whom he was strangely close and allowed unusual behavior in to show that...it was okay that he was rich??  And honestly, for the most part I didn't blink much at that, because okay, sure, but it's evidently a theme with the brothers that gets pointed out repeatedly in this book, presumably for emphasis of their lack of airs, and at one point one of the brothers makes a comment about his valet being a Rom and therefore "hard to tame" that was hella uncomfortable for me.)

Anyhoodle.  Ashley writes well, and Beth and Ian have great chemistry, and if you're into the sexy parts, there's a lot of that, and people assure me that it's hot.  There's a mystery element to the book that as far as I can tell readers are split on, and I could care less about because I could always care less about mysteries.

The interactions between the Mackenzie family, particularly around Ian's early-life institutionalization and the reason for that, were what really drove this book for me, outside of the push-pull of Beth and Ian.

However.  There's a lot of underlying WTF in this book for me.  Returning back to what Ian knows about Beth's fiance, it's that he's a male sub.  That is, he likes to be spanked by women.  Oh, the horror.  The worst part is, this isn't necessary?  The guy is a spendthrift who wants to marry Beth purely for her money and that's more than enough of a reason for her not to marry him.  But no, evidently he has to be a "pervert."  This problem is made a bigger problem by the fact that it turns out that Ian's eldest brother, who, you know, will get his own book later, is a Sadistic Top.  E.g., it's fine to be kinky, as long as you're the right KIND of kinky.  How's that for some toxic masculinity for you?  

Throw in there that this book has a surprise!lesbian villainess for no obvious reason--and this woman literally has no role other than to be a faceless sex worker and a murderer--and an obsessedmistress!villainess--again, having no role other than to be the older brother's masochistic sub and a murderer, and I'm like "there's, uh.  A lot happening here."

It puts me at a quandary.  Because if you take out the mystery element and Beth's fiance, neither of which are actually necessary for the book, weirdly enough, it's a well-written romance between two enjoyable characters with unusual representation of ASD in histrom.  Except that you can't take all those out?  I suppose it's kind of a "now you know, you can make your own decision."

This was one of those books where I took a chance, knowing that the concept felt somewhat icky to me, to see how the author carried it off.  The answer was basically "fine."  I wasn't running for the hills by the end, but I didn't particularly care to read further in the series. 

The premise of this feels extremely Old School.  The female lead, Mia, was captured by corsairs on a sea trip at seventeen and taken to be part of a harem in the Middle-East.  Some seventeen years later she escapes during what is essentially a coup, and returns to England.  She goes back to her father, who feels pretty accurately sociopathic in his need to marry her off before someone catches on to the massive lie that she's been in a convent all this time.  Unfortunately, she's neglected to mention that she's left a seventeen year-old son behind, and has every intention of going back to get him.

(It's honestly never entirely clear to me why she can't just get him to come in the first place aside from "because plot" which I don't love.  I'm not saying the author doesn't give a reason.  It's just...not a very good one.)

Anyhoodle.  Enter Adam, our main duderino.  Adam has had two wives die under, uh, questionable circumstances.  This has made him persona non grata with the rest of society.  But Daddy Sociopath needs his daughter to legally shack up and he really does not care with whom she does it.  Adam has not so much planned on doing the marriage thing again, but, welp, Mia's pretty fascinating, so he changes his mind.  In fairness, this is the part Spencer makes work.  I believe Adam is lonely, and sees Mia as a fellow outcast and wants what being with her offers him.

And for readers who are into the sexy times, Spencer is also quite good at those.  They don't particularly do anything for me, but I can tell, objectively, that they're well-drawn.

When Mia finally begins working toward her goal of getting back to her son, Adam's reactions are probably accurate--angry she hasn't told him, certain he's not going to allow her to set foot anywhere near danger--but I don't care?  She speaks Arabic, he doesn't.  She knows her way around the palace, he doesn't.  Also, it's her son.  Whom she's going to recognize.  And I'm just over domineering male behavior.  I know a lot of readers find the "I'll protect you instinct" endearing.  I find it annoying.  Tell her you wish she wouldn't go, then respect her choices, FFS.

There's also this storyline regarding Adam's first wife having been mentally ill and him being terrified that it's been passed on to his daughters that's hard to talk about because while I respect that mental illness in women remains stigmatized today and was a weapon against women at that time, the whole storyline feels a) unnecessary and b) ableist in a manner that left a bad taste in my mouth.

Similarly, Mia spent seventeen years of her life in the harem, she raised a son there.  Yet she seems to have no friends whatsoever--it's clear that there was a lot of rivalry, but it seems unlikely that zero alliances would have been formed--and aside from her ability to speak Arabic and her sexual knowledge/her relative lack of caring about what British society thinks, she doesn't seem to have picked up ANYTHING from being in an entirely different culture, where everyone would have practiced a different religion.  It's as if the harem was a vacuum of a sort.  I get that the premise of being a harem captive is treading some pretty fine lines in terms of Orientalism/exoticization of the Other.  But the way it's used in this book makes it feel like because it's outside of England, it doesn't exist as a place of its own, a place that MATTERS, and that isn't a great solution for the overall problem.

In the end, this isn't a badly done book.  It's just not a well-done book, either.

I had an intense debate with myself over whether I was going to review this book.  I have followed the author on social media, she's extremely sweet, she's a WOC, publishes independently, works a day job, and small authors depend so much on positive word of mouth.  She's someone I want to support as a person.  However, as discussed in-depth in this highly recommended episode of the Smart Bitches podcast, if readers in a genre aren't willing to honestly review the genre, it makes it extremely hard for other people to come into the genre.  This is made worse for under-reviewed genres like romance, where, for example, the NYT reviews MAYBE twenty a year, usually four to five at a time, and the reviewer is Olivia Waite, a romance writer herself, who is thereby under pressure to constantly represent the best of the genre.

That is to say: if readers of romance aren't willing to admit that there are not-great or even bad romances out there (and there are plenty), there's nowhere for newbies to turn to and get trustworthy information, which in turn, makes it a pretty big gamble to even bother with a genre nobody is rooting for in the first place.

Given all this, here I am, reviewing this book.

Let me say that I did find some positives about this book.  The heroine is plus-sized, and I didn't feel that was fetishized by the male lead, just appreciated.  There's a woman character who has an interesting background and could have made for a very intriguing lead later on.  There are family dynamics that I find enjoyable in the abstract.

There are basically three main problems with this book, and those problems are...significant.

1.  The writing is highly simplistic.  And while that can be a style choice, if it is, it does not work, here.  The dialogue often either falls flat or just plain is not something one human would say to another.  The descriptions can feel either trite or uncomfortable.  The literal language that guides the narrative doesn't flow the way it needs to.

2.  The exterior obstacles often do not make sense.  It's not that you can't understand what's happening.  It's that it wouldn't happen.  I am NOT (as anyone who reads this blog or has, you know, ever had a convo with me about this knows) a stickler for "historical accuracy".  I could indeed, give less than negative two fucks.  That said, if the premise upon which certain actions rest are so inconceivable in terms of the way British society at that time worked, that's a problem for me.  I need to have a mere patina of believability re: what people might have done/thought/etc, but I do need that patina.  And it's not here.

3.  The characters and their actions are never properly fleshed out.  For instance, the heroine is an eighteen year-old (possibly nineteen, I think they waited a year), making her debut.  Hero is known as the Bachelor Duke because at the ripe age of thirty he hasn't settled down.  Let's put aside that that wouldn't have been terribly remarkable and pretend it would have been.  It takes about fifteen seconds for BD to fall in strong lust/have serious interest in the heroine.  But like...has this guy never met an attractive woman before?  I truly read the whole book and I had no idea what it was about this 18/19 year-old chick that was healing this guy's trauma-based marriage-aversity.  My best guess is she had really great breasts.  No, I am not kidding.

All of those are enough that the book wouldn't work for me, and until about the last thirty pages I was mostly just feeling like the whole thing was a bit unfortunate.  Then we get to those thirty pages.  There are two "villains" throughout this book.  I put that in quotes because they're not really around much, they show up when needed for plot and both of them are driven by greed and just being bad people.  While I do not deny that there are bad people in the world, the one-note level of these two is somewhat egregious.

In any case, said villains decide, for Reasons, to burn down the house--in London--that the heroine and the female character I felt had the most promise in terms of backstory, along with said female character's young child, are all in.  Miraculously, the heroine and the child make it out, and no other houses are burnt, which, if you know literally anything about how fire worked in Regency London is, ah, not possible, I shall say lightly.  The other woman dies--seemingly silently, not even going to talk about how that's not a thing when one is caught in a burning house--and the heroine and BD are married two days later.

That's not an exaggeration.  Nevermind that the woman was the half-sister of BD's bestie, who's having a bit of a rough time.  Nobody seems to consider maybe, you know, pushing back the wedding.  It's like "aw, sad.  Welp, let's get married and bang!" 

To say that I was wigged by the wrap up would be something of an understatement.  

She has the second in the series out now.  I honestly wish her the absolute best of luck, but that's going to be a hard no for me.

I decided, shortly after it became clear that the television series for Bridgerton had not removed the rape scene, that I was not going to talk about it here.  Honestly, I didn't want to talk about it anywhere.  I felt--now, in hindsight, extremely naively--that rape spoke for itself.  It turns out that not only does rape not speak for itself, that we as a culture are so steeped in it that we do not recognize it when we see it.  And that if we suspect we might have seen it, we will do anything and everything we can to explain or excuse it.

Let me set out some points and definitions that I think are important:

1.  It is okay to like rape in fiction.  It is even okay to like rape between love interests in fiction.  Because it is fiction.  Neither character is actually being harmed.  The corollary to this, however, is that it is NOT okay to pretend like what you are enjoying is not rape/convince yourself it's something else.

Let me give you an example of how this works.  I LOVE stories where terrible things happen to people.  Things like, oh, rape, and enslavement, and other horrible things.  I like this because I get emotional fulfillment out of "watching" these characters heal.  And for that fulfillment, I need that first element.  So I LIKE reading about, say, people getting tortured.  Which yeah, pretty problematic.  Which means I say, "I like this problematic thing, in this case, having a character be raped so that s/he/they can overcome the pain of that."  I DON'T say, "well, it wasn't rape because..." or "the rape is okay because..."

2.  Historical accuracy is not an excuse for rape.  In fact, if you are using historical accuracy to excuse something you know is terrible such as racism, misogyny, etc.?  You're not paying attention.  Historical romance novels are not historically accurate.  They are full of Dukes who are young and good looking.  They are full of marriages for love.  They are full of good hygiene and women not dying in childbirth.  AT MOST their accuracy might relate to the clothing or the events of the age.  Maybe.  If you find yourself saying "well, it would have been historically accurate..."  Stop.  Your argument is "I like this, so I'm gonna say something about history."  That is literally your whole argument.  It is a bad one.

3.  Rape is committing an act of sexual intimacy with another person that second person does not agree to.  If you're defining rape by the way the courts in any Western nation does, or in any way other than "rape is what happens when one person does NOT want something sexual to happen, and the other person does it anyway," you are allowing for rape culture to be perpetuated.  


4.  There are no "better" and "worse" rapes.  Getting physical pleasure out of a rape does not make it BETTER.  Not being beaten into submission does not make it BETTER.  When we say one type of violating someone's person is BETTER than another, we tell certain types of victims that their pain isn't valid.  And that just makes us shitty human beings.

All right.  So, why, in May of 2021, six months minus one day after this series debuted am I deciding I'm going to say something about this?  Well, mostly because it won't go away.  Yesterday, in one of the histrom communities I'm in, I saw someone refer to the rape in Bridgerton as an "alleged rape."  And evidently that was my breaking point.  Not the least of which because I know that person is an attorney and so they actually know what the term alleged means.  

There is no alleged rape in Bridgerton.  For one thing, this isn't a case we're trying.  Nobody might go to jail here and so there's no necessary presumption of innocence until guilt is proven.  But for another thing, the rape occurs on screen and we know all the facts.  Here are the facts:

1.  Daphne does not know how sex works.

2.  Simon does not tell Daphne.  He lies to her, because it is to his advantage.  This is a bad thing.  He should not do this.  This is similar to say, a woman telling a man she is not on birth control, when in fact she is.  He uses power and knowledge in a way that is really quite gross and we don't like it.

3.  Daphne figures out she is being lied to.  She initiates sex with herself atop Simon.

4.  Simon enjoys this at the beginning.

5.  Simon realizes what is happening and that he DOES NOT WANT TO CONTINUE.  He states "wait" and exudes physical distress.

6.  Daphne does not wait.  She does not respond to his signals of his distress despite it being clear that she sees them.  She rides him to completion despite the fact that he has clearly, for lack of a better term, withdrawn consent.  Further, she has planned to do this with the awareness that this would likely be the outcome, that is, she has pre-meditated violating Simon's consent and thereby raping him.

At this point in time, Daphne has committed rape.  Despite the fact that almost every publication that wrote about this called this the "controversial scene", and, so far as I can tell, roughly 75% of people watching this show didn't even notice a violation of consent, let alone a rape had occurred, there is no controversy here, nothing is alleged, Daphne has committed a sexual act that Simon did not consent to on Simon.  It does not matter that Simon did consent at first.  It does not matter that Simon did not clearly say "no."  It certainly does not matter that he did not physically remove her.  Nor, as some people are arguing, is this scene made "less rapey" than the book because Simon is not drunk.  Simon is no more or less a rape victim here because he was not drunk, and Daphne is nor more or less a rapist.  Which is to say:

Daphne has raped Simon.  And that is literally all that matters.

Now, going back to what I said above: it is OKAY to look at this and say "yeah, she rapes him, but I still like it."  It really truly is.  It is okay to have reasons why you like it, or to NOT have reasons why you like it, it is OKAY.  

What's not okay, but what seems to be the majority's response is the either excuse it in some way or explain how it is not rape.  Some examples of this are:

1.  At that time in history, a husband could have raped a wife without any consequences.  

Yes.  You are correct.  Why does this matter?  What is your point?  How does this excuse Daphne raping Simon in this instance?

2.  He deserved it because he lied to her.

So...now rape is punishment for lying to people?  That's how we're going to live our lives?  Sounds like a great plan.

3.  She's taking the only power she has.

Well, I mean, I agree, rape is about power rather than sex or love or any of those other things, so in terms of excuses or explanations, this is the one that comes closest to working.  But then, why are we OKAY with women using sexual violence as a tool of power?  Because I'm going to posit that if we are (and I actually think we are: Chris Van Dusen's comments regarding this scene, people's use of this argument and the high level of complete obliviousness to the violation in the first place all suggest that we, as a society, are on board with women's sexual violence toward men) we should think about why and if that's actually a good thing.

4. He could have thrown her off.

This is victim-blaming, pure and simple.  End of conversation.

5.  He didn't say no.

This is victim blaming.  There's no question she knew she was doing something he didn't want.

6.  He enjoyed it at first.

So...if we like one thing about a sexual encounter we are contract bound to agree to and like all the rest of them?  If you're making out with someone, that means you have to give them a handjob/they now have to eat you out?  I think we can all agree this is a patently ridiculous way of looking at sex.

7.  He came, so he must have liked it.

I beg you to read up on prison rape.  Cis-men often come while being violently raped.  It is a physical reaction to something that is occurring to their bodies, nothing else.  This does not somehow make the act not rape or make the rape BETTER.

I am sure there are other bad arguments that have been made that I am missing, since this has been percolating life coffee gone bad inside my brain for six months now.  The point is this.  Liking Bridgerton doesn't make you a bad person, a bad consumer of fiction, a bad feminist, a bad anything.  You don't HAVE to care that after Daphne rapes Simon she tells him it's his fault for lying to her, you don't HAVE to care that she never apologizes, but is awarded with a happy marriage anyway.  You don't have to because it's a story and you can have whatever narrative enjoyment of it you please.  And I mean that, truly.

What you do honestly have to do if you don't want to live your life as a rape apologist and someone who supports rape culture, is you have to acknowledge that Daphne rapes Simon.  That's literally it.  You just have to say, "yup, that's a rape."  Six months ago, I would have said it wasn't that big an ask.  That, uh.   That was a happier time in my life.

With this one, I figured I'd try and stretch my comfort zone a bit to do erotica, but stay in historical.  I also was willing to allow for the kink element because it's F/m.  I'm glad I took the chance, because my main issues with this are the same issues that I have with novellas at large, which is that the author doesn't really have time to flesh things out the way she needs to.  I know that writing with brevity is a skill, but it's not so much that Davidson doesn't have skill, it's that this story needs more time.  It just does.

This story starts sort of...mid-action in a way.  It's the second in a series, and Eliza, our female protag, married Dev, our male protag, in the previous book.  In their courtship, Dev, who's sexually submissive, liked that Eliza was aggressive instinctively.  However, Eliza was raised by a mother who runs a finishing academy and who is constantly emotionally abusing Eliza into believing she should be more deferential.

Let me get this out of the way: so much of this could have been solved by a basic conversation, in which Eliza said, "Does it bother you, my forwardness?" and Dev said, "Are you kidding, that's what I married you for," but then we wouldn't have a book.  Anyway, Dev is so disappointed in his suddenly-not-aggressive bride that he sends her off to one of his estates (he's been disowned but he's doing well in business as a club owner, because everyone knows BDSM clubs were not only super simple to zone but also highly lucrative in the Regency) where she has been for a while.

At the beginning of this book, Eliza is invited to the wedding of one of Dev's business partners, and she has no intention of going.  She's still in love with Dev, still hurt by his apparent rejection.  Now, look, I don't care about villains, okay?  I don't care if they're layered, I'm not going to be interested.  That said, villains who are just...bad people because they are bad people that have no redeeming values?  Always feel a little bizarre to me.  Because those people are really rare.  And usually psychopaths.  Eliza's mom is written as one of them.  And it's kind of hard to imagine how she's even built a business because she's such the stereotypical "only cares what society thinks, has no moral compass" that it's weird to think even society would trust her.  But whatever.  The point is, mom has stolen from her own school and now needs Eliza to get money from Dev so that her parents won't go to debtor's prison, and Eliza loves her dad who seems basically harmless, if also useless, so, yeah, she goes.

Dev is not thrilled to see her.  He still misses the woman he thinks he married and doesn't understand where she went, exactly.  However, in fairness to Eliza, Dev's not helping himself.  And yes, Dev has issues, he has been harmed and disowned by his father when his preferences were discovered.  But also: she's your wife.  Adults talk.  And this is where my novella problem comes in.  These two characters have a good push-pull chemistry, and as she slowly figures out what Dev wants, and whether she wants to give that to him, Eliza is able to seek out advice from the professional f-Dom in the club, able to discover her own D-voice.  In return, Dev pulls his head out of his bum and starts figuring out where Eliza's damage comes from and helping her to own herself in front of her mother, which allows for her to build confidence in herself.

The problem is, as I think is clear, is I feel like the set-up of this is pretty clumsy, and because of the length of the piece, the parts that are the strongest (outside of the sex, which is well-written, so, in terms of erotica, you're set), are rushed.  It's unfortunate, because histroms with female dominant-male submissive dynamics are exceedingly rare and while there were a number of things about the way they fumble their way toward it that bothered me as a practitioner, it worked for two people who would not have a lot of language to discuss what they were doing and might feel uncertain about discussing it.  Also, both characters had potential in terms of not just the relationship, but their own stories of growth.

I guess, at the end of the day, I'm left hoping Davidson will return to writing this dynamic, but give herself more space to let it breathe.

Before I start this review, MAJOR CW: infanticide.

I've been trying to figure out how to describe this book and, ironically, words are coming up short.  It's sweeping and hella emotional and with few nitpicks, a really rock solid piece.

The female protag, Catherine or Ying-Ying, depending on what country she's in, is the daughter of a Chinese concubine and a Scottish man who died shortly after her birth.  Her mother became the wife of a governor and died when Ying-Ying was around ten.  One of the things I love is that neither the mother, nor any other women who engage in or live by any type of sex work are considered lesser anywhere in the text.  They are actually commonly used as spies and other agents because of their recognized value.  Her mother is remembered for numerous artistic abilities and other valued skills.

Ying-Ying is raised by a governess figure (a master thief, it's not actually clear how she ends up in this role) as a martial artist, and tutored by an Englishman in English and other Western information.  When she resists being raped by her oldest step-brother, it sets off a series of events in which the English tutor is killed by a second step-brother.  This, along with some other plot elements, ends in her disguising herself as a young man and acting as an information courier for her step-father (who is not a total shit, unlike his two sons).

It is while she is out acting in this capacity that she meets "The Persian."  Aka, our male protag, Captain Leighton Atwood, who is not Persian even just a tiny bit, but is passing as while mapping Chinese Turkestan for the British Raj as a counteroffensive against Russia's apparent intent to come through the Asiatic continent.

One of the things I love about this relationship is that Atwood is pretty hard up for Ying-Ying the moment he meets her.  (And he sees through the disguise almost immediately, but never calls her on it.)  But he doesn't even attempt to get in her pants.  Rather, he takes care of her.  He finds food for her, and tucks her in, and does all these tiny things that nobody has ever bothered to do for her and she is absolutely slain by his kindness.

Unfortunately, after they eventually become lovers, a miscommunication leads to him leaving her, thinking her an agent for the Chinese government and preying on him.  As he leaves her, she's mad enough that she gives him a "salve" that is actually poison and spends the next eight years thinking she has killed him and feeling deeply shitty about that.  Because, on top of the fact that her anger wears off pretty quickly, turns out she's pregnant.

Tragically, two months after giving birth to the baby girl, the step-brother who has sworn vengeance on her due to Reasons, finds her and kills the child.

All of this plays out in flashbacks that take place in between the current action, eight years later, wherein Ying-Ying has gone to England to look for jade tablets her step-father needs.  Because this is a romance, and this is how romance works, she almost immediately meets Atwood, who has just become betrothed to another woman.

One of my very few problems with this book is that the woman, Annabel Chase, ends up being a villain, giving away Ying-Ying's location to her enemy, whom Annabel well knows will kill Ying-Ying.  This honestly felt unnecessary, particularly since there was another character that just as easily could have done so and would have made as much sense.  It felt like an outdated trope for trope's sake.

Which is odd, because so much of this book does not fall into that.  Even though there are dual POVs, this is really Ying-Ying's story.  The HEA requires resolution of her family issues as much as it does Atwood giving up England (for the most part) to marry her in China, take on her life.  Even when things are at their worst between them, Atwood isn't cruel or hateful to Ying-Ying, and for the most part, neither is she to him. 

Overall, though, this is moving and both main characters are people you not only want to spend time with, but wish to know more about.  There's a lot about this book that is different than other histroms set at the time without upsetting the norms of the genre.  I enjoyed it muchly. 

Rose Lerner casually mentioned in one of my comms that she loved this book because it featured one of her favorite kinds of heroes: the secret people-pleaser.  That was an interesting hook for me.

Overwhelmingly, this is an extremely well-executed book.  It takes a bunch of tropes and tips them just far enough to the side that people who love the trope get what they want, but there's also something fresh about the approach.  

Xavier, our male protag, is an earl who is heavily invested in his reputation as a rake.  One of my nitpicks about this book is that it's not clear to me as a reader WHY he's so invested in this reputation, which he does not seem to, you know, LIKE, until pretty late in the book.  While his reasoning makes total sense once it's revealed, it would help a lot to know that much earlier in the book, because I spent a lot of the book being bumfuzzled as to why he wasn't just like "eh, fuck it, this was a good run, moving on."

Anyhoodle.  Part of that rep is that he always wins his wagers, particularly against his cousin, a Marquess, so higher ranked.  But his cousin is amongst the "impoverished" nobility and Xavier is decidedly not.  Xavier takes a bet from Cousin Marquess (CM), that he cannot invite a respectable maiden of the nobility to his infamous two week Christmas party and have her stay.  Xavier doesn't love this bet, because it risks someone else's reputation, and that's not the way he plays, but he also can't see his way out of it, so he agrees.  CM names the woman who just HAPPENS to be Louisa Oliver, who thinks Xavier caused the scandal that befell her the season before to arise.  (He didn't, but he knows she thinks he did.)

That scandal is that Louisa's fiance jilted her for Louisa's sister.  Louisa doesn't hold a grudge, she's living with her sister and brother-in-law, but she's also in an unenviable position, having been jilted, the object of a scandal, and being a bluestocking, not someone people gravitate toward.  She accepts Xavier's invite mostly on the theory of "look, I could use a little new in my life."  She goes with her aunt, a Countess who Knows What Is Going On and Is Not To Be Fucked With, Young Men.  (The Countess is my fave, kay?)

Louisa, as a general rule, is good at observing, at seeing what other people don't.  Which is why she figures out fairly quickly that Xavier is mostly BS.  And Xavier, who has never really been seen before, finds that he likes being seen.

The slow build between these two is highly enjoyable.  A lot of talking about books and ciphers and, wait for it, actual feelings, the way adults should.

CM is the Big Bad here, and he's an unnerving Big Bad.  Almost TOO much so for a histrom.  Because his motivation is 100% Entitled White Male who feels he has Not Gotten What He Deserves, and he actively threatens to rape Louisa in order to get what he wants in this case, does, at two different points, attempt to sexually assault her.  He doesn't get far either time, but his menace is something too familiar to feel any kind of remove from.  He's honestly terrifying in a way very few romance villains are. 

They do declaw him, although, I somewhat question the level to which they manage and if they haven't just sent him away to stew until he can come up with another plan. 

That said, I did find the ending to be spot-on, as it circles back to exactly why Xavier has hidden behind this persona the whole time, and how, in being with Louisa, he gets exactly what he needs to let that go.