Bitchin' Blog Posts
Candy’s Reader Interview is up!
by Candy | May 29, 2005 | Sunday at 10:36 am | 6 CommentsMaili interviewed me for her website! Go check it out. The critics have weighed in, and this is what some of them have to say:
“Great interview!”
“Brilliant as always.”
What are you waiting for? Go! Read! Because I plan on spending most of this weekend reading, and Sarah is smack in the middle of moving-in hell, so God knows what kind of content you’ll find on the site this weekend.
Filed: News
Emma said on 05.29.05 at 09:13 PM • [comment link]
Okay, I decided to ask here instead of in the other thread since this probably isn’t something for the FAQ (though you might think differently).
Since you listed Gaffney as a favorite author and then rapist heroes as a pet hate, I was wondering which Gaffneys you’ve read and which you haven’t?
The first one I tried was TO HAVE AND TO HOLD, which does have a rapist hero, IMO. It was handled fairly well, so I did end up liking this book, though.
But the next ones of hers I read were THIEF OF HEARTS (hero comes damned close to raping heroine) and SWEET TREASON (hero definitely rapes), and after that I was seriously traumatized.
Since then, I have read SWEET EVERLASTING, which has a wonderful beta hero and is my favorite of hers so far. I do know I want to read more of her books, but I’m wary of it because of the heroes. It might be that I just managed to pick up the wrong ones first, though.
So my question is, have you read any of her rapist heroes, and if so, how did you feel about them?
Candy said on 05.29.05 at 10:39 PM • [comment link]
I confess, I haven’t read all of Gaffney’s work. Sweet Treason is one of them, and it’s in my gigantic TBR stack. It’s also her debut novel, and I don’t doubt she was writing under the constraints of the genre at the time (Lisa Kleypas’s first book also features a rapist hero, and her second book has a hero who is pretty damn brutal to the heroine, too). I also only made it through about half of Fortune’s Lady, but I don’t think the hero rapes the heroine.
I’m not sure I’d classify what Sebastian does in To Have and To Hold as rape. It’s not nice, definitely, because he’s quite clearly trying to affect Rachel, get a reaction from her. In my opinion, it’s in that grey “forced seduction” area. And he feels really, really, really, really bad about it and makes up for it later, and a really, really good grovel from a hero (plus the assurance that he won’t do anything remotely like that again) will usually allow me to forgive him a lot of bad behavior. Plus, as Rosario noted in the past (I think it was on Romancing the Blog), you can tell that even as Sebastian was doing it that he KNEW it wasn’t right, that it went against his ethics, which makes his turnaround more believable because it’s easier to affect a behavior change than a true worldview/attitude change.
I have read everything Gaffney has published for Topaz, and I can tell you that the quality is miles better than what she wrote for Leisure. My five favorite books by her are Sweet Everlasting, Wild At Heart, To Love and to Cherish (talk about a sweetheart beta hero—Christy is my favorite hero of all time), To Have and To Hold and Lily (which she wrote for Leisure, and which features A BASTARD ASSHOLE [though non-rapist] HERO who does grovel and grovel at the end). The other books she wrote for Topaz are OK; the two romantic comedies she wrote (Crooked Heart and Outlaw in Paradise) are so-so, maybe a C+ or so.
Anyway, nobody does sweetheart beta heroes like Gaffney, at least while she was writing for Topaz.
Maili said on 05.29.05 at 11:03 PM • [comment link]
I agree with Candy. I don’t quite consider Sebastien a rapist. He’s definitely not heroic for what he did, but I think he pushed boundaries to see how far he could go before she’d react, but it went further than, I think, he expected. I base this on his behaviour before and after. This series of little incidents of trying to provoke her into reacting. That incident is part of that. I may read it wrong, but that is how it seems to me.
Emma said on 05.30.05 at 12:04 AM • [comment link]
I have issues with the term “forced seduction.” I’m not even sure exactly what it means. In my mind, it’s either seduction (the woman doesn’t protest much or with much voncition, and on some level or other, she wants him to change her mind) or it’s rape (she does NOT want it to happen).
It’s been a while, but as far as I can remember, Rachel did not want it to happen, and Sebastian knew that. If it wasn’t rape physically, since she didn’t fight him, then it was mentally, at least.
Like I said, I did enjoy the book overall despite that. Gaffney did a good job redeeming him, and it’s believable because of the kind of person Rachel was. But I do think that a different heroine (or woman, including myself) could never have forgiven him for it.
As far as I remember, Sweet Treason has a much more blatant rape. In Thief of Hearts, there’s just an attempt, but that book also had a resolution based on a legal impossibility, so there was no chance I’d not hate it. *g*
Emma said on 05.30.05 at 12:05 AM • [comment link]
Erg. Voncition = conviction. Sheesh.
Candy said on 05.30.05 at 03:29 AM • [comment link]
“I have issues with the term “forced seduction.†I’m not even sure exactly what it means.”
You’re not the only one. There was a very recent discussion on Romancing the Blog about this, and I think there are two very definite schools of thought about this: either you think it’s possible (in the context of fiction only) or you don’t. I definitely think there is a difference. And frankly, I find it hard-pressed to delineate the differences—kind of like pornography, “I know it when I see it.”
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