Reread 2023 - 2 stars from 5.
Book’s too slow, and the romance doesn’t really start until 60%.
it’s a very thick book almost 700 pages, and I found myself bored most of the time.
Spoilers
Safety
Ow drama : I didn’t remember any safety details from 20yr are ago (read this as a teen and I thought this was KW best book ever🙄🙄), but after sleeping with the h (drunken mistaken identity, he doesn’t know who he slept with, he still thinks h is a boy at this stage),
⛑️he ends up marrying her more beautiful cousin the morning after thinking he had slept with the cousin instead,
and they ALL end up living in the same mansion while he’s having sex with his wife(ow). The sex with the wife/ow lasts a few months.
- He remains married to this ow for half the book, and he had a separate mistress while married to her. (So He cheats on his ow/wife with the mistress for a few months)
- MCs are separated for few months, and h is celibate, and H wasn’t (he had a mistress).
- after H marries the h (in name only), he kept the same mistress he had while married to his ex wife…and he does visit her once, but couldn’t go through with it. When the mistress asks if it’s over between them, he said “I don’t know” 🙄. So this mistress is around forever.?
- while H is married to the ow, he kisses the h twice. (I would consider this behavior cheating)
- Theres barely any love scenes here, and it’s a huge book. Once in the beginning around 20%…and not more until past 80%!
Never re-reading this again!😒
- some people are calling the first drunken sex rape, I didn’t see it as such, it was more like a tstl moment from the heroine side.
She kept feeding him alcohol when he was already drunk, had a concussion from a severe hit on his head, and was confused, he was an injured man!
When he came around, she made him think he was at a brothel, and not at her house, then told him she was one of the whores, and she told him “not yet” because he didn’t pay her yet, so he paid her with his necklace and they had sex. She had a body betraying moment during it🙄..
At any time during this, she could’ve told him the truth, like who she was, that would’ve stopped him.
instead she lied and lied, kept feeding the poor guy with more alcohol and confused him. Tstl h!
And in the morning, he couldn’t remember what had happened, he had passed out.
I’m sure, if this was a cheating moment, and the H had a gf/wife, there would’ve been people calling HER/h the rapist for taking advantage of a man who wasn’t conscious enough to make decisions. The h found him few hours before passed out from a head injury floating down the river. Someone had tried to murder him while he was getting drunk…who took advantage of whom here?