"Kathleen Woodiwiss is credited with the invention of the modern historical romance novel: In 1972 she released The Flame and the Flower, an instant New York Times bestseller that created a literary precedent."

*spoilers ahead*

I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. While I can respect (if you can even say that) that this plot and normalization of rape and villanizing of certain characters (among so many other things) was kind of the norm for original romance books, I was still taken by suprise how much Heather just went along with the events in her life. The only act she really did that made her 3-dimensional was attacking her potential rapist in the very beginning.

The book was very formulaic, and by the end Heather and her rapist/husband/baby daddy do fall in love and I felt genuinely cared about each other. Heather has been sexually awakened and Brandon partially realizes that Heather is only 18 and needs to be treated with respect. I was slightly surprised that once he found out that she was pregnant with his child that he didn't rape or try to have sex with her for close to a year.

I think it's also important to note that for those who are giving this book 4 or 5 stars--to everyone who is appalled by that honestly shouldn't be. This book "should" classify as a fantasy. Some people enjoy these books (which 9/10 of them include rape) because they want to feel not being in control and want to feel the sense of dominance characters like Brandon can provide them. Brandon is rich! He buys her all of the dresses she wants! He agreed to marry her! He will fight to protect her!

It's not hard to list all of the reasons this book does NOT age well for a variety of reasons. But it's also important not to descredit the reasoning why others may enjoy this book. Whether that be for the romance, Heather's character, the drama, anything.

Being labeled "the first romance book" I thought it was a good book to read, if anything, to explore for the history of the genre overall.