I received the following Book Rant from MoWeezy, who had a really, really difficult time reading Lora Leigh’s Nauti Temptress. Expect livid fury, unabated. With gifs!
Long time reader, first time caller and all that.
I wanted to tell you about a book that made me scream, throw my kindle, and metaphorically rend my garments.
I used to be a big fan of the Lora Leigh oeuvre. Sadly she’s long since gone off the rails, and I’ve returned to my first love of Regencies and Jennifer Cruisie. However, I read a Leigh recently that made me FLAME with anger.
Like this, pardon the swear:
Should have known from the title: Nauti Temptress. I thought I’d send it over to you so you could either tell me I’m crazy or if i’m crazy right.
Seriously this book made me so angry I winged my e-reader at my boyfriend screaming. Essentially there’s some really patriarchal “let’s shame the woman who makes choices for her body” that I had to keep checking that this was in fact by the same author of which I had read SO many books. Apologies if we differ on our viewpoints on abortion/my semi-flippant treatment here, this book just threw abortion/the morning after pill around so much it made me livid.
Point 1- The author refers to the morning after pill as an “abortion pill” multiple times. Medically incorrect. Granted, people shouldn’t look to romance novels as their medical advice but still. Research please. Or just leave it out.
Point 2 – Hero has sex with Heroine and doesn’t tell her that the condom breaks… for DAYS. (She’s a virgin and doesn’t realize it apparently)
Point 3 – Hero has sex with Heroine again, and doesn’t use a condom and then she freaks afterwards.
Point 4 – Hero essentially LOCKS Heroine in this house/ removes her ability to leave the property for 72 hours because that’s how long she has to take the morning after pill. Seriously, there are paragraphs devoted to his thought process here. This is where the screaming escalated.
This is the kicker- Heroine figures it out, and freaks out, NOT because she’s 24* (or so — I don’t know exactly, but LL prefaces this book with the Hero being at least 10+ years older) and her significantly older man is preventing her from getting medical assistance but because she can’t believe his first reaction would be (to assume) that HER first reaction would be to abort.
Especially because they have had NO conversation about this being anything other than casual sex. And she’s just recently lost her virginity. To him.
It’s not just this one section, but this hero’s hang ups with women having reproductive choices separate from what the men in their family would want, is just RAMPANT in this book. Not that I’m expecting a romance author whose male characters are predominately overbearing Type As to suddenly make them all hip with the feminists but seriously, I couldn’t deal with Leigh forcing this stuff down my throat. (hah. get it?)
It’s just weird seeing it from an author who has a whole series of books that revolve around man-wolf/coyote hybrids that have a biological imperative to have TEH BUTTSECKS with their “one true mates.”
Just wanted to see if you wouldn’t mind like to warning readers out there, who may be attempting to reconnect with Lora Leigh, since the first Nauti series was pretty good. There is no mention of this craziness in any of the Amazon reviews, or anywhere I could find in a quick Google search.
I wanted to warn the SBTB community that if they feel as I do re: women’s reproductive rights, they should not waste their $9.99. Unless they want to yell and throw things.
I never DNF a book, but this is the first one I had to force myself to finish.
The real thread that runs through this is my sadness at authors who are extremely prolific (Leigh, Kenyon, etc.) who have these crazy/amazing books or series that start, and then they continue them into this realm of just utter ridiculousness. The parts that I loved about the initial books get tainted with this formula, and they go downhill, and fast. I tend to read a new book and then go back and read the backlog of an author, and I’m usually surprised at how much I prefer the initial books to the ones that are still coming out (see Sherrilyn Kenyon). Combined with this obvious ploy at pushing an agenda — the Hero’s opinion on birth control and a women’s ability to make choices — it completely removes me from the story and it’s hard to even want to go back and read the inspiration for this novel, because my view of these characters has been so tainted. I’ve sworn I won’t buy another Lora Leigh ever again.
I think that’s what made me so rage-y, these original characters who were such fun romps (although the book’s not what I would categorize as a “romp” it’s just super fun and quick to read) get turned into caricatures in order to sell more books in the same series.
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What. The actual. Fuck.
The first several points irritated me, but didn’t seem like anything particularly out of the ordinary for the anti-choice set. HOWEVER.
Point 4 – Hero essentially LOCKS Heroine in this house/ removes her ability to leave the property for 72 hours because that’s how long she has to take the morning after pill.
What the hell?!? This is supposed to be the hero??? We are seriously supposed to read this character as heroic? Because imprisoning a woman is all fine and dandy, as long as you’re doing it to keep her from making a decision about her own body!
Flames. Flames, flames on the side of my face. Breathing… breathle… heaving breaths…
You mean Sherrilyn Kenyon actually gets worse? I really tried with the Dark Hunter series. I waddled my way through Fantasy Lover, though the heroine thinking ‘o, he’s hot’ every single page got on my nerve. I was hoping that would improve with the second book in the series, but sadly it didn’t. When I found myself shouting at my e-reader “I get it, he’s hot!” I knew it was time to add this book to my DNF-pile. It’s probably me, most people like her Dark Hunter series a lot.
As for this book, I will definitely give it a miss. There’s a fine line between being an Alpha and an A-hole, and it looks it has been crossed big time with this book. Not my cup of tea.
Note to self: Don’t buy any books by this author. I wouldn’t want my e-reader to suffer a mishap.
A little off topic: Last December here in Germany TWO catholic hospitals refused to see to a RAPED woman, because part off the after-rape-treatment would be offering the morning-after-pill.
Only after a big public uproar saw the diocese in question fit to apologize and to rewrite their instructions for their staff.
Big note to self: never get raped in a utterly catholic region, because there may not be any non-catholic hospitals.
(In Germany, the morning-after-pill is prescription only.)
Kenyon’s were the first romances I ever read, so it made me sad when I realized that they’re basically formulaic crap. Still have a soft spot for Acheron though. But yeah, Leigh’s alphas, to quote Jerricho Barrons “drive me bug-fuck” since they’re not big on letting their heroines make actual choices. It’s one thing when the choices are “You will go to the salon and get a total body wax”, but another when it’s “I will lock you in a room until we find out if you’re pregnant.” There are a number of books out there in which the condom breaks/the hero forgets the condom in the height of passion and then he just quietly sits on that information hoping for the best, but confinement? Yeah, so not cool.
I remember disliking Fantasy Lover and rolling my eyes at the many, many sequel bate guys in the initial books in her Dark Hunters series, but, yeah, they were better than her newer ones. Although, since I quit at around Acheron (so very disappointed with that book, especially after all the anticipation Kenyon built up for it), I suppose I’m not really familiar with her most recent stuff.
No. Just. No. Fucking. Way.
So this book starts with a profound misunderstanding of basic physiology and reproductive health, escalates to a felony, and caps it off with a little stockholm syndrome. I am literally speechless in anger right now.
I was literally gaping while reading this. I would have thrown my e-reader too.
That’s just . . . I can’t. . . words. They’ve taken my words.
Also the gif made me laugh.
The Hades gift just about says it all. Ugh. Yikes. and WTF???????
That’s horrible! Even worse than Sherrilyn Kenyon and the way her heroes become constestants in “worst childhood EVAR” competition. I am WAY too over that. But I haven’t read Leigh’s “Nauti” series but for one, and I am not likely to now.
No. Just No. But I totally love your GIF and it’s going on my computer.
ugh—agree with every other angry commenter. It bothers me to no end when books/movies/TV give false information about the morning after pill (I’m looking at you The Walking Dead on AMC). And obviously it bothers me more that imprisoning a person and preventing her from making choices about her body is considered romantic.
Wow – this just blew my mind. What is sexy about a man forcing children on a woman? This sounds more like a Stephan King novel about abusive relationships and treating women like reproductive machines or something.
And the gif was awesome! Totally saving that for later use. 😉
Seriously though, I’ve never been this mad at fiction before – and it’s a book I didn’t even read! How can this be by women for women???
Wow. I am never reading another one of LL’s books again, not buying them, not informing the library when they’re missing a book in a series. Each of those points are awful by themselves and together they’re despicable.
I imagine there was a point no.5 : after learning that the “hero” isn’t concerned about unplanned pregnancies, any self-respecting heroine—especially in tropes where she’s in favor of spontaneous sex—should have either dumped him or immediately gotten herself SOME form of birth control that isn’t dependent on a man. Preferably an IUD, seeing as this “hero” sounds like the kind of abusive a-hole who’d sabotage anything that he get his hands on, such as diaphragms or pills.
What a sexist piece of garbage. RUN away from any man that acts like this. It is not conflict…it is abuse.
And the female protagonist still thinks this asshole is the love of her life? Holly shit.
I read the first run of the Nauti series and, really, those guys were pretty douchey. It was always “You’re too young, you’re too innocent, you’re too …” whatever. They were always deciding what the woman needed or could handle and it only got worse when the main protagonists became the females of the Mackay family. I haven’t read the new one or the novellas and I’m honestly not interested.
Jesus hopping Christ on a jump rope. I tend to avoid contemporary romances in general but this is an extreme example of exactly _why_: i.e., gender roles that are likely to make me want to set something on fire. And I am not doing that to a poor innocent _expensive_ ereader.
I don’t have enough words to express how much NO there is here. And I’ve written _four novels_. I have a LOT of words!
LL does have a tendency—much more so in the last couple of years—to have her hero/heroine relationships devolve into “Me big strong alpha male, you female! You worry about babies and my happiness!” No matter how tough her heroine starts out, she always eventually ends up pliant and happy and pregnant. I assume the multitudinous screaming orgasms and buttsex render her brain to mush.
On a side note, is it just me, or have LL’s sex scenes become…less pleasant? I remember in the last book I read of hers (Navaro’s Promise), all the sex-adjectives were things like ‘screaming’ and ‘arching’ and ‘desperate’ and such. Orgasms were mind-blowing and copious, heroes were painfully rock-hard for their heroines’ aching wombs…very little pleasure in all that biological imperative. It’s part of what made me quit reading, and I used to *love* the Breed series.
What the actual fuck!
And on top of all that, the title of the book makes all of this her fault because she was the “temptress” and a “nauti” one at that. (WTF does “nauti” mean? Does this series all take place on boats?)
Thank you for bringing this abomination to attention. What troubles me most about this kind of misogyny coming from women writing romance: It’s becoming more and more prevalent in the books I pickup these days.
It’s one thing for an author to share her values subtly, but please don’t shove it down my throat!
And what’s the morality message of the whole thing?! Manipulating and lying to a woman to take her virginity is morally a-ok?! Jesus says YES! to hot monkey sex out of wedlock without true informed consent, but gives a big NO-GO to taking birth control? How does this form of sexual morality work exactly?
I am surprised innocent virgin heroine knew so much about birth control. One of the things that annoyed me most about 50SoG was that heroine seemed to not understand/appreciate why they needed birth control. She was always mocking him for having condoms and she found it annoying he asked about her menstration. But I appreciated that he was concerned about birth control and tried to act what I considered responsibly. Of course I guess she wanted to have his baby, but she couldn’t tell him…
I don’t know. Having baby to me, is a big deal one that hopefully is not entered into rashly especially by two people who aren’t married and are still getting to know each other. Why can’t two people in books talk honestly about having a baby? Versus all this shady underground shit!
Of course reading over the review again this isn’t underground. He is out-and-out forcing to have a baby. Jerk!
If I mention this part, and if someone reads it, then most likely I’ll be strung up a tree or something. But since I’m ignored, don’t have to worry about that. The book sounds similar to fifty shades and twilight series, at least the summaries that I read about them anyways.
Thank you SO much for letting us know this WTFery. I’ll *definitely* stay away from this book. I’d liked her earlier Nauti books – despite the alphole males – and will not be returning to it. I know not all women are alike, but to have this book come out at the same time that women’s reproductive choices are being assailed is terrible.
Overall, I have to agree with all the rage at the growing douchey misogyny of LL’s “heroes” (hello, normal, independent-minded woman here, thank you), and note that the 72-hour-kidnapping thing seems like a bit of disturbing bandwagon jumping on her part. It seems increasingly trendy in some types of erotica – not even BDSM-type – to have captives falling in love with their kidnappers and calling it romance; I don’t get how Stockholm Syndrome is romantic, or how kidnapping rapists are hero material, but then again, I don’t get how some people fall in love with death row prisoners, so what do I know.
@Dread Pirate Rachel – is that…are you quoting Clue? If so, you are my hero <3
oh my good lord, is this for real?????
wow. Kudos to you for finishing the book (or, in the tradition of LL, did you have a guy force you to?).
I stopped reading her books years ago because I started feel like the heroines were falling in love via a ‘Stockholm’ syndrome.
OK— my Thinking Woman rage is battling with my not-so-recovering English Major rage to see which rage can be the ragiest.
“Nauti”—what’s with the misspelling? It’s not hot or clever—it’s just stupid!!!! I’m developing the same rash that I get when I have to patronize car washes or corner markets with “Qwik” in their names.
And human sexuality is politically incorrect. Most of us have at least a few impulses, fantasies, or outright bents that are not all about equality and sensitivity. And I think it’s perfectly fine when a piece of fiction acknowledges those primal cavepeople turn-ons.
However, it’s entirely another matter to build an entire plot and a “hero” around someone whose, supposedly evolved, thought processes allow him to disregard another human being’s reproductive choices. I read romance and sci fi and fantasy and the newspaper, so I’m willing to suspend disbelief with no problem. But I’m with MoWeezy—there are some disbeliefs I’m not willing to suspend for a character who is presumably supposed to be sympathetic by the end of the book.
While I can totally understand the rage, I have to agree with Cbeta. This is pretty similar to 50 Shades in the way he is so over-the-top controlling, trying to make her do things for her own good, treating her like she has no brain etc. Granted, he wasn’t trying to control her reproduction in 50 Shades, but pretty damn close. Ive only read a few of Lora Leigh’s books, and that was enough for me. All all her “heroes” seemed over the top alpha to me. I like me some hot alpha, but they all seemed like jerky douches.
It seems to me that there are more and more of these regressive stories like this one being written in the romance genre lately and I’m finding that more books are hitting the proverbial wall as a result. I am finding fewer and fewer romance books that I actually want to read or that I end of finishing. I know that the book that shall not be named has probably contributed to this, but it seemed that the tide was turning in that direction even before that book came out.
Wow. This is awful.
“And human sexuality is politically incorrect. Most of us have at least a few impulses, fantasies, or outright bents that are not all about equality and sensitivity. And I think it’s perfectly fine when a piece of fiction acknowledges those primal cavepeople turn-ons.”
This is true, and it’s supposed to be a liberating element in romance. however, my sense of this book from this review is that it [along with a number of others, e.g. “Captive In The Dark”] goes beyond captive and rape fantasies that accept what they are and into romanticizing forcible confinement. There’s often the need to suspend disbelief in reading fiction, but in some of these stories, the need is sorely tested by alpholes who practise controlling, abusive, or felonious douchebaggery and are still called heroes.
I’m sorry you had to read a book you found so insulting. I sure wouldn’t read it. It sounds like both the hero and heroine are absolutely irresponsible—and the hero criminally so. Personally, I still find the killing of babies beyond insulting. Anyone who doesn’t believe a three-month old fetus is a person should look at an ultrasound image. Murder of any sort is a bad choice.
GhengisMom—That’s a quote from the book? I’m stunned. Completely stunned. Part of me want to get up and slap someone and part of me just wants to sit down and cry about how little attitudes have changed. One thing for sure, I will never buy a book by this author, or any others with such misguided misogynistic views.
That sounds like a whole economy-size bottle of crazysauce.
Wait – that’s seriously a quote? I actually want to go and punch some man right now. Angry feminist!!!