aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
okay so! I liked parts of this book - the heroine being a sweetly innocent tourist of Hawaii's natural wonders, learning to fly (in one sweet scene), swimming, more. I liked the housekeeper being a kind mother-figure to the heroine, and parts of the banter between heroine and hero.
But the hero R U I N S it. god he's an asshole. The climax of the book is him attempting rape on the heroine, then blaming her for making him do it as he leaves in a fit of having a conscience.
Before that, he's just a raging asshole.
See - the concept is, the heroine's parents divorced when she was seven and her mom took her to France, and promptly set to neglecting her. Her mom destroyed the letters her dad sent, kept the money, and let her believe that her dad abandoned her.
After her mom dies in an accident she flies out to Hawaii to find her dad, and immediately runs into the hero - who takes one look at her, hears that she's here to meet her dad, and he decides that she's clearly here to lie, cheat, steal, and hurt her father. He accuses her of being an actress, he interrupts every meeting between her and her father, doesn't let her go anywhere alone, and through the entire book accuses her of being a liar. Oh, he also forces kisses on her, too.
Early on she reveals that no, she's poor and the letters were burnt - and he calls her a liar.
So she decides that no, seriously, fuck him, and decides to prove herself: she won't reveal that she's poor or explain the situation to her father. She'll be nice and wonderful for two weeks and leave without taking any money.
So it's almost, almost interesting - she's sweet and innocent and he begins to realize that she's actually the lost lamb she presents herself as, and he falls in love...
Until at the luau she slips off into the forest to sell a locket from her mother's collection because she's so broke she can't go home to France, and he catches her with the fellow, and later in privacy he accuses her of being a prostitute.
Yep. What the hell.
She, rightfully furious, refuses to explain herself, tells him to fuck off, and he begins to force her back on the bed and rape her before he stops himself, accuses her of making him lose control, and leaves.
She rightfully goes "what the fuck" and leaves the next day, and........
Cut to a three page epilogue where she's been back at her teaching job in France, doing alright with herself, when he shows up at her school, apologizes and explains how he found out that oh. she isn't a prostitute. and he apologizes and she just goes "okay" and expects him to leave. So he goes "no I love you and I want to take you home to Hawaii to marry you"
and I would have been over the moon if she had said no and seen him out
but this is a terrible book so she goes "oh! then marry me, THEN take me to hawaii!" and they're happy and the book ends
sigh
The book gets two stars because even this early on Nora Roberts is a solid writer, and I loved the flow of the prose and how descriptive and sweet the island was. But the rest of it... it's only salvaged by being 160 pages. If it had been longer I should have thrown it in the garbage.
Which really sucks because there could have been something sweet here! Have him believe her, have him not be an asshole, and have this be a sweet tale of homecoming and love and luaus and learning to fly. I wanted that. But it's not what I got.
(PS I'm told Nora Roberts stops writing this kind of asshole in the mid 90s, so I look forward to reading her modern stuff - which I'm already enjoying very much!)