This has redefined one star for me as a rating. I feel like I need to go back and reup all the other one stars I’ve given. This is my rock bottom. You know when you read a book so bad you can only really blame yourself? Like, I need to reevaluate how I’m spending my time and why. That’s where I’m at right now with this one.
It all started in a Kilsyth op shop when I saw that out the back of the book section, there was a trestle table overflowing with romance books from the 70s-90s. They were all a dollar each, so I thumbed through them, choosing only the most problematic titles and tropes.
You see what I mean? My fault. It’s like putting your hand in a tiger cage then exclaiming in shock when you get fucked up. Why did I do it? I think I thought the lols would outweigh the eyerolls. This was a fatal miscalc on my part. What I hadn’t factored in was that I… you know… had to actually read the bad writing to form an opinion. Maybe this is an extension of another annoying part of my personality where I like to hunt for hidden gems in forgotten media just so I can brag that it was ME who found it FIRST. But that’s for therapy, not for goodreads.
This book has an Arrested Developmentian (totally a real adjective) premise where a step-uncle has to live with his step-niece but they both want to bang. Oh, and it’s the frontier times, so hope you enjoy a lot of racism against Native Americans crammed in.
The characters front load OTT yearning in the first thirty or so pages, but it was like Hess didn’t know what to do once they actually got back to the guy’s cabin. Her way of countering this was to make the uncle act like a jerk, the niece unreasonably jealous and interject a bunch of deeply random characters into the mix to force a nonexistent plot forward. The book is also rife with padding - do you like reading about a poorly sketched character weeding a garden? Do you like lengthy monologues about alternative sources of milk for babies (it’s goat milk)? If so, I STILL DON’T RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.
Once they do the dirty, which happens with almost no lead up at about halfway through the book, the randoming really begins. The way Hess writes her sex scenes can only be described in the following valley girl verbiage: grody.
For some reason, an orgasm is only referred to as a little death (maybe she thinks this elevates the work, I don’t know, but we get it girl, le petit mort, very good) or cresting. A penis is exclusively “his arousal.” The protagonist’s breasts are always “proudly” jutting and thrusting in her dress, dangerously bordering on boobily boobing into every room. At one point in a scene, the not-really-her-uncle describes being inside her as like “fitting himself into a leather glove”, a phrase so abhorrent to read that I threw my ancient copy across the room in abject horror, in the process startling my dog.
Then, when discussing whether she could be pregnant, the protagonist reflects that his seed could well be growing right under her heart, which had me like… do you mean in her literal intestines? Like I get that technically the uterus is under her heart, but it’s under her heart in the same way her feet are. Just say “inside her” omg.
Sometimes you just have to put the damn book down, look in the mirror, and give the wag of the finger you were gonna reserve for the book to YOURSELF. I will be in silent contemplation, Billy Ray Cyrus style, with much to think about for some time to come. Or not come, sorry - *the little death.