The classic love story of a beautiful-but-doesn't-know-it orphan running from an ugly old rapist into the arms of a handsome verile rich rapist who is forced to marry her and take her to his plantation full of black slaves.

Who IS she? Why are her breasts mentioned as often as her name? why doesn't she realize what a treasured beauty she is and hide away from all the jealous, fat, ugly people? Women hate her, men (at least four) want to rape her!

I press on because, curiosity. Thee bodice ripper. Surely I must understand why this is the book that launched a thousand spicy books. But I can't.

I kept trying to rewrite the moments in my mind. How can we take this

"get in that bed or I'll force you to"

and make it respectable? I can't. You'd have to throw out most of the plot. 

The Bridgerton series has a story of a similar plot, but it was a misunderstanding that lead to a forced marriage to preserve honor. No actual harm done to anyone. I suppose you could exchange that for multiple rapes resulting in a pregnancy? 🤦🏻‍♀️

A series of baths, dress fittings, baths, and more baths follows. All the while,

our hero denies his victim access to his body to punish her for the forced marriage.

After a few more rape attempts from other men,

he finally professes that he wants her. He gives her an ultimatum-- either have loving relations with me, or I'll forcibly use your body to jerk off because boohoo, I'm suffering. Then he stomps off.

Fortunately when he returns, he doesn't have to rape her again. She's resolved that it is his right as her husband to touch her. 

They go to poundtown without her kicking and screaming. She's into it! Great. Cool. But then she drops this line like, "why didn't you tell me it could be so good?"

UMM because initially he was ignoring your screams of "no" and raping you, 'member? 

After everyone comes into their bedroom and says "congrats on the sex," he shoos her off to go tend to the baby they only have when it's useful for the plot. It drags on a bit, we get treated to a blackmail scheme, courtesy of an evil, murderous, rapist cripple.

One more final attempt at rape.

There's a showdown, the hero gets shot and has

crazy amounts of control over his body when she

digs the bullet out with scissors.

Honestly, the writing quality is so good, I struggled to come up with a rating for this.