This book was not for me. It was slow, had a meandering plot and really could have done with a strong editor to cut out about 100 pages of the middle where nothing furthered the plot. The characters were annoying and did not develop at all throughout the story. Would not recommend

I read this because it’s supposed to be the OG “Bodice Ripper” and I want to get into my granny smut era. 

Let me just say if all Granny smut is like this I don’t want it. 

Every smutty scene was quite literally assault and non consensual.

Now I’m v into a little dub con  and have always been a dark romance girly. This was straight up rape and treating a woman terribly. There was no love felt between either of these characters and I think that’s where it fell off for me. 

Also, SLAVERY??? I know it’s historical fiction but that was A LOT to process. 

The prose is poetic and beautiful so I absolutely see how it gained popularity back in the day but it just didn’t hold up to my modern standards. 

 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.

The beginning of this book is very challenging to read, oof. I put the book down at ~20% and it took me weeks to pick it up again and only because I switched to audio. Once you get past when he essentially rapes her TWICE and after they're forced together it gets slightly better from there. This is definitely an old style book where the heroine is extremely young, virginal, but feisty and opinionated which gets her into "trouble" with the hero. Heather is essentially a clone of the heroines in Johanna Lindsey's Captive Bride or Gentle Rogue or Julie Garwood's The Bride (pretty much the standard character of pre-90s romances :X) Brandon's character is not that great either. The characters that save this book are his man-servant George, especially when he gets drunk and talks to his cat, his brother Jeff (Geoff?) who flirts hardcore with Heather, and the black servant (former slave?) Hatty or something who is stereotypical sassy. Like the writing is good, the characters are iffy but somewhat redeemable at the end, and the story is a bit hard to read in this day and age.

Heather's aristocratic dad gambled away all their money so she's been forced to live essentially as a servant with her aunt and uncle doing manual labor everyday and wearing clothes too big for her - because she's slim and beautiful. Her aunt's brother comes to visit and offers to take her to be a teacher at a "school" (Brandon explains at the end that the school was actually a brothel so she was being lied to) so he takes her to London where he tries to rape her and she causes him to fall on a knife when she defends herself. Thinking she's murdered him she flees into the night and ends up lost near the docks where she's mistaken for a prostitute. Thinking she's been caught by a seaside magistrate she goes without a fight and ends up in Captain Brandon's bed where he fucking RAPES HER, including taking her virginity and his only thought is "huh that's weird she's a virgin, she could have sold that for a lot of money." And he even sees the blood and she's fucking crying and everything. But he decides he's going to keep her, basically keep her naked in his cabin and use her as he pleases. The next day he rapes her again and keeps her locked in. She manages to trick his manservant George and she escapes back to her aunt and uncle in the countryside.

But time passes and she becomes pregnant. When she's forced to admit that it was Brandon who impregnated her (leaving out the bit about murdering the aunt's brother), they enlist the help of her benefactor a powerful Lord to find Brandon and force her to marry Heather. Brandon is pissed because he had offered to set her up has a well-to-do mistress but she had refused, so he promises that yes they'll be married but he plans to treat her like a servant. (Thank GOD this didn't happen or this book would have been unreadable). Much later we find out that Brandon had been frantically searching London for her because he was immediately obsessed.

They go back to America where he has a plantation near Charleston. He had planned to marry Louisa for her land but obviously that can't happen now. Louisa becomes the antagonist in this book and its fucking insane. She will just barge into his home and Brandon doesn't ever tell her off (AHHH IT'S SO INFURIATING). She's constantly trying to split them up and makes tons of comments right in front of Heather attempting to seduce Brandon. EVEN AFTER HEATHER GIVES BIRTH. In one scene she's literally breast feeding her son Beau with Brandon right there and Louisa barges in and tries to seduce Brandon.

The whole plot when they're in America is that they still fight but Brandon is attracted to her but he's too proud and wants her to come to him. He ends up not having sex with her or anyone from the time he raped Heather and got her pregnant until months after she gives birth to their son. Heather wins the hearts of the townspeople, his brother Jeff, George, and the house servants. They all get mad at Brandon for how he treats Heather.

Then one day the tailor for the aunt's brother shows up, Mr. Hint (sp?). He blackmails Heather to pay him off or else he'll let everyone know her murder crime. BUT turns out the brother hadn't did, it was Mr. Hint who killed him bc he was sick of him stealing his dressmaking work for his own. He was forced to flee to America too and he starts murdering women in town. He's butt ugly and he murders women who turn him down. When Louisa starts letting him use her in exchange for pretty dresses, he admits the info about Heather and she immediately wants to reveal this info because this is what is needed to break up Heather and Brandon. Mr. Hint doesn't want to reveal it because then he can't blackmail Heather for money so he murders Louisa. Then there's a scene where he almost rapes and murders Heather but Brandon saves her in time, but gets shot in the process, and then it all comes out that Heather had revealed all this while she was fevering once and Brandon didn't confront her about it but he knew. So basically everything works out and they start having sex like a normal couple and are a happy family with their son.