rubya

The kidnapping and rape scenes in this book literally made me feel nauseous. All I wanted was the heroine to get away from him. He was a revolting character and absolutely repelling. In my opinion, he had zero redeeming qualities.I have read "bodice rippers" before and I have enjoyed them. I recently re-read Lindsey's Fires of Winter which features kidpnapping, slavery and rape and I enjoyed it. Yet, somehow, this book is more disturbing to me for one basic reason.In my opnion, most of these "old style" bodice rippers were entertaining and fun because the characters are stylized stereotypes and don't have a lot of nuance to them. We don't get too much into the psychological undercurrents of what is happening and therefore, we can release ourselves into a story where a Viking barbarian enslaves and "conquers" his woman and we can be entertained by it in the same that one can accept the the lack of logic and realism in a fairytale and just go with it.Newer romance novels delve into the nuances of the relationship more and the psychological undercurrents of the relationship dynamic. Newer heros/heroines seem closer to "real people" and are no longer two dimensional steretypes neccesarily. This makes it much more raw and disturbing when there is a hero who would hurt the main character, take away her agency, rape her and "force her." Honestly, I couldn't stop thinking about what a scum bag he was.I don't know if I can finish this book, because I don't believe in the hero or heroine and I don't know if I can care about what happens to them.