This week, Jane and Sarah discuss a letter from a reader named Sage, who is looking for resources to help her identify and avoid books that may contain scenes of rape or assault. We discuss rape in the genre, triggers, and practical ways to identify books that may feature scenes that affect readers negatively. Please note: we don’t read aloud any violent scenes or anything like that, but we do discuss rape and forced seduction in the genre, character backstory, and the ways in which sexual violence is depicted in romance past and present.
Then we talk about what we’re reading, and we discuss a book that we very very nearly agree on.
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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
The publishers that we mention which provide trigger warnings and content warnings in the cover copy or in the description metadata are Riptide and Samhain.
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Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is Deviations Project, from their album Adeste Fiddles. I gave in and bought the album – and really, my need for Christmas music is exactly zero – because it’s all so awesome.
This track is, if you didn’t identify it already, The Holly and the Ivy, a traditional holiday carol.
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Former Army intelligence officer Seth Hightower may work with the Hollywood elite as a makeup artist, but he’s learned not to trust the rich and famous with anything more than a good time. Only one woman ever tempted him to break his rules about dating actresses–and she left him with the memory of a single night and a lifetime of what-ifs.
Hollywood “It” girl Gia Harris is used to being in the spotlight. But after she witnesses something that puts her life in danger, she needs to avoid prying eyes. Seth’s special skills make him the perfect person to keep her famous face out of the news, but their history makes him the last person she wants to be alone with. He’s far too tempting–and now, far too close…
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Transcript
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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello there! Welcome to episode number 118 of the DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Jane Litte from Dear Author.
Before we get started, I want to start by saying TRIGGER WARNING: We are going to be discussing rape in romance in this episode, based on a reader letter from Sage, so please be warned. I’m not reading loud, violent scenes or anything like that, but we are discussing the prevalence of sexual assault as a plot point or a backstory development and the ways in which readers interact with rape and, and scenes of sexual assault in the genre. That’s probably the first half of our discussion, and if that’s something that may upset you or put you in an unsafe place, I want you to be, be aware. We don’t get any, into any particulars, but we talk about books where there is rape, where there is not, and we talk specifically about how readers can identify those books to keep themselves and their reader spaces safe and exactly how they want them to be.
The music that you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and where you can buy all of this lovely, lovely music.
And this podcast is brought to you by Berkley, publisher of Only for You, the brand-new novel from Beth Kery, author of the New York Times bestseller Because You Are Mine.
So we are going to start today’s episode with a letter from Sage. This is where the discussion of rape begins. Just be ye warned.
This letter is from Sage:
“Dear Sarah and Jane,
“I’ve been binge catching up on your podcast while cooking Thanksgiving dinner today – so first off thanks for being such good company. You are well-loved around our house, where my boyfriend refers to you as ‘the sexy-smart ladies.’”
Sarah: Okay, well, well, your boyfriend’s awesome, so thank you!
“After hearing both Kate Noble’s most recent interview and Courtney Milan’s I am finally going to try to articulate a question I’ve had simmering on the back burner ( yep, I went there – I’ve been cooking since 6am, sue me.)
“Ok, so first a little not so fun background. I was raped as a high school freshman. It was a violent experience and it left me pretty shell shocked and very dissociated from any sense of budding sexuality that was starting to emerge in my teenaged self.
“Luckily for me life has more for made up for that one instance of trauma. I have a community of friends and family who continually support me in my healing process and I’ve been able to find peace and purpose through volunteering in the sexual assault survivor community.
“Around my 18th birthday one of my sister’s slipped me a copy of some Amanda Quick book, I read it in like a day and my libido totally took notice. It was so cool! I wasn’t ready to dip my toe into any sort of sexual relationship in real life, but I was totally sold on reading about how awesome and not scary romance and sex could be.
“Fast forward about a decade and I still love reading romance and I can be a pretty equal opportunity reader. BUT – and here’s where I get to the damn point hopefully! – I do not want to read about rape or sexual assault. I don’t even want to read the hints or threats of these things.
“I am in no way speaking for every member of the sexual assault survivor/romance reader community when I say these things are deeply painful for me to read about. I’ve talked to woman who find it empowering to read about characters overcoming sexual violence – and I totally get it. I just don’t want to do it.
“Reading a rape scene sends me into a bad place and I’ve come to respect that while I can answer phones at the sexual assault resource agency till the cows come home, I can’t welcome a rape scene or the hint of one into my imagination. And that’s totally ok.
“But it leaves me with the issue of having to figure out if a book I want to read has any of that triggery stuff in it. So I guess I’ll split my question into two parts.
“Firstly – I REALLY want to try out some of these authors I’ve been hearing about from you, mainly Kate Noble, Courtney Milan and Tessa Dare. Are there any books I should definitely not read when I jump into their backlist?
“Secondly – Do you know of any resources for checking if a book will contain sexual violence? I can always troll Goodreads or review sites, but that takes a bunch of time….
“As a quick aside- someone pointed out to me that at least one publisher (Riptide) lists ‘warnings’ for things that might be triggery on their website when you look at a book description. I think Riptide is primarily m/m romance, but I took a look and it’s a super easy to navigate setup – it would be so great if more publishers offered that!
“Well, that got long-winded 🙂 Thanks for all the time and effort you put into the community. You’re awesome!
“Happy Holidays!
“Sage”
Sarah: Before I get to Jane’s and my discussion about identifying books and scenes with rape in them, I want to thank Sage for emailing us first of all, because that’s a really difficult thing to talk about, but it is an important topic that we do need to discuss, especially as Jane and I discovered when I did research about this particular topic, there are a lot of reviewers who make it a point to mention whether a book has or does not have rape, especially when it’s not obvious in the book listing. There’s a lot that can be done in this situation, and I think that this is a great discussion, but I want to thank Sage for having emailed us and to say that I am so, so sorry that that has happened to you.
The two things that I thought were most interesting about her letter were the fact that she wasn’t sure how to go about identifying whether or not there were rape scenes in books or if a book contained sexual violence and that she wanted to know if there was a way to find a resource that would help tell her that. Now, we’ve talked about rape in romance before, particularly the use of rape as a, as a backstory development for instant emotional depth and sympathy for heroines, but I haven’t seen that many obvious markers of this book contains sexual violence, unless it’s tagged on Goodreads or the publisher, like Riptide or Samhain, specifically says so in, in one of their product warnings. Have you seen anything like that?
Jane Litte: Well, I know that some authors put it in there, and I think that more authors, or maybe all authors, should. I remember reading a review of a book once, and the reviewer said she didn’t know that there was a rape in the book, and none of the reviews that she had read said that, and she bought it and she read it, and she was a rape survivor herself, and she said she couldn’t stop reading it because of her past trauma and that she felt like she was being raped all over again.
Sarah: Ohhhh, God.
Jane: It’s terrible, right? It was terrible. And I remember there was a book that someone had recommended to me, Aly Martinez, and I can’t remember the name, the title of the book. It was very popular on Kindle, and I bought it, and it opens with a very violent gang rape scene.
Sarah: Guuuh.
Jane: It’s totally unprepared for it, and I’m not a person who is averse to reading that in a story, but I, I was just taken aback, and I just stopped reading it then, and I’ve never gone back, and every time I look at it, I’m like, oh, that’s the rape book. And I don’t know if it’s, I feel like it’s far more prevalent in self publishing or indie titles than it is in mainstream, traditionally published titles, and I just wish that authors would be more sensitive about warning readers, because that is a real trigger for people, and it’s becoming, it’s almost like there’s hardly a book that doesn’t have it. I participate on some Amazon forums, and the very first question that most people ask is, is the heroine raped? now. I mean, that –
Sarah: It, it, it’s, it’s kind of sad that that’s a question that’s so frequently asked.
Jane: Yeah, and, and it’s asked because it, the, it’s become so commonplace for the heroine’s emotional arc to include sexual assault, and I know sexual assault’s very common for women, so maybe in some sense that’s realistic, but the fact of the matter is that, that there’s so many books these days with that as part of the trope you can almost not escape it.
Sarah: I have that problem too, and I, and I think I’ve said this before, that the number of rapes that are actually occurring and actually unreported is probably equal to or greater than the number of heroines who face rape in the backstory or in the present of, of romance fiction currently being published, but the fact that rape is the default emotional trauma for women is really tiresome.
Jane: Right. So, I mean, I, and I totally understand. I think it’s really the, I think that authors need to be more responsible and provide those trigger warnings in their blurb, maybe even in the front of their book. If they choose to go that route, then they need to be upfront about what the book contains so that the reader is not unaware. I don’t know of a source for her. I think that the best thing that someone like her can do is to get into a reader’s group or Amazon forum and just start asking questions. Does this book have rape in it? And it’s going to be more time consuming, but if it’s problematic for her then I think it’s important for her to reach out to other readers and see if they can help her. And it’s, you know, those Amazon reviews, unfortunately, aren’t – a lot of people don’t like to spoil things –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jane: – like, they think that – I mean, for me, if a book opens with a rape, that’s not much of a spoiler, right?
Sarah: No, that’s, that’s kind of – I don’t know, if it’s in the sample, it’s not a spoiler.
Jane: Right. [Laughs] Right. I, I can’t remember which of the reviewers – I think it was Eagle at SM Book Obsessions – wrote the review for Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover, and the hero, Ridge – and I use the word hero kind of loosely –
Sarah: His name is Ridge?
Jane: Yeah.
Sarah: Okay.
Jane: – is, is deaf –
Sarah: Right.
Jane: – and it’s revealed in the sample – I think it’s at fourteen percent – and she puts that in her review, and, and the Hoover fans descended on that Amazon review saying, I can’t believe you spoiled this book! Now I won’t ever be able to read it!
Sarah: [Laughs] That, it, what, wait, wait, and the hero had blue eyes? Oh, no!
Jane: Right. I mean –
Sarah: It was in the first fourteen percent! It’s not a spoiler! Great day in the morning.
Jane: And it was obvious that these people had read the book, but they were like, no! Now you’re going to ruin it, and I won’t be able to read it! And I’m like, Jesus, you’ve already read it and given it five stars, so – [laughs] I find that a little problematic that, that reviews aren’t as helpful as they used to be, and so you really have to seek out individuals who are kind of like-minded, people who like the same books as you, and then seek them out and, and, and ask for help from them.
Sarah: I think it’s important also because a lot of romance readers are, are seeking the, the, the genre because it is a safe space for them.
Jane: Right.
Sarah: This is not the first time that I have read about or heard a person who has survived sexual assault say that the portrayal of sexuality in romance as a positive and fulfilling thing is was helps them understand beyond their own perception of sexuality, which is violent and negative and scary and awful, and I don’t, I don’t want anyone, like you said, to start a book and find themselves triggered or traumatized or put into a very unsafe space for themselves because of what was in the book. What I find really frustrating, for example, for a little while, Joshilyn Jackson’s Someone Else’s Love Story was on sale, and Joshilyn Jackson is a wonderful writer. She’s really, really talented, but nowhere in the description of this book is there the fact that part of the story rests very heavily on a rape, and I had to start looking at the Goodreads reviews, specifically the one and two stars, to find out this information. Like, there’s one review by a reader named Ashley who says, “I can’t stand this book…There is a rape at the core of this book, and the writer writes it very sympathetically with regards to the rapist,” and I could not read this book. I would, I, I want to know that before I say, hey, this book is on sale – Trigger Warning: there’s rape in it. I mean, to have nothing in the cover copy, no indication in the story or the description, and sometimes you can kind of tell. Like, and then a bleak event from her past – oh, well, she was raped. And then a traumatic event – yep, okay, hold on, time out, maybe – well, it’s not mugging. It’s probably not mugging, maybe she doesn’t get pickpocketed. Probably raped ‘cause she’s a girl, and this is fiction, and that’s the default. So you can sometimes tell. There’s no sign in the, in the cover copy for this book at all. And at least with Amazon reviews, they’re searchable, so if someone has taken the time to be specific for a book you can go to that book’s page and search for the word rape and see if anyone mentions it. Or sexual assault, or whatever. As a consumer, that’s time consuming – consume, consumer, consumering? – but it, that’s pretty much the only option I know of for readers, like you said, to find reviews that mention them.
Jane: And I guess the, I guess publishers and authors don’t put it on because they don’t want to scare readers away, but –
Sarah: Yep.
Jane: – I feel like there are some readers who are never going to be happy reading that, and why expose them to it? I, I don’t know, I feel like, in this sense, that kind of a, a person’s trigger should be observed over your own mar-, marketing desires.
Sarah: I agree with you. I think one of the other problems is that people have very different triggers –
Jane: Yeah.
Sarah: – and so it’s, it’s very hard to say, well, if this book is triggering in any way, we need to label it. I don’t want to say that, because for one person it could be the smell of Old Spice, and for the other it could be the sound of a coffee grinder, and those are both equally traumatic experiences for those people. However, I think the portrayal or – specifically, the portrayal and the aftereffects of rape are a very common trigger. Common enough, I think, that it would be possible to identify books that do or do not have it. One of the ideas that was suggested to me by Tessa Dare was to maybe develop a specific database of books. Does this book contain rape? Yes/No. What kind? Backstory/During the text. Like, very simple rubric of identifiers to show whether or not a book portrays rape so that people could quickly search and identify.
Jane: Well, I think that would be a great idea, but as you and I both know – [laughs] – something like that is really time consuming.
Sarah: Yes. I need a couple grad students and a grant – [laughs] – another grant. I should start writing grants. Or write to – do you know a billionaire named Grant? I could write to a billionaire named Grant. That would help. Forget the whole grant thing; I’ll just write to Grant the billionaire, or the billionaire who grants grants.
Jane: I don’t know any billionaires. I know a couple millionaires, and none of them are named Grant.
Sarah: I, I know some thousandaires, and they’re not going to sponsor this, but it, it does seem like a logical thing for, particularly for this community, because the romance genre is so very much about sexuality. And I’m not trying to say at all that romance should not contain rape ever. You know, I remember when Anna Campbell’s first book came out, there was a great deal of response from some readers, very loudly, who were like, I cannot believe that we are going back to the days when there was rape, and this is horrible! And yet, I thought that book was real-, it was hard for me to read. I didn’t, I didn’t necessarily enjoy every part of it, but I didn’t think that what she was doing was reviving the old-school rapetastic hero stereotype. I thought she was doing something very challenging and very different, and with the fact that rape is so common now in heroine stories across multiple genres, it does seem like this is a thing that we could identify for readers to create a safe space, or that people could voluntarily identify.
Jane: And we, and you know, it’s not limited to romance. I mean, science fiction, fantasy –
Sarah: No, it’s true.
Jane: – does that a lot. The Mercy Thompson series, for example, Mercy is raped in a later part of the series.
Sarah: Do you know, I read that, and I was like, wait, what, was she raped? Did that -? Wait, how did -? And it was, it was so vague for me, I didn’t actually know; I had to go read reviews to confirm whether or not that had happened.
Jane: [Laughs] Well, it happened.
Sarah: Yeah, apparently, and I was like, oh, well, apparently I was not paying attention. I have a lot of sympathy for readers who end up reading about situations that are so personally traumatic for them, and I don’t ever want to tell, you know, authors what they can and can’t write or tell publishers what they can and can’t publish, ‘cause that is certainly not my job, and not a job that I want, but I do think there, there is a way to identify books that contain rape and signal readers that that’s something that they might encounter in a book.
Jane: But like you said, it doesn’t even have to be overt. It can just be the dark trauma of –
Sarah: Yes.
Jane: – her past. Then, then we’re like, oh, okay. I’m going to assume –
Sarah: Yep.
Jane: I agree. I don’t think we need to limit the genre or what people can write and, and, and the reader wasn’t wanting that at all –
Sarah: No, no, no, she doesn’t.
Jane: Other readers find this cathartic. There’s certainly some anecdotal evidence that rape survivors find some comfort in those sorts of stories, and I don’t, and I think that given that it’s such a common experience for so many women, that there’s, that in-, inclusion of it is probably important.
Sarah: Yep, yep.
Jane: And I think it’s just as important to be mindful of the – to not re-traumatize people, I guess, is – through fiction.
Sarah: Do you think that there are some series or some authors who go for the most graphic as possible depictions? That that’s what their readership expects?
Jane: Oh, for sure. For sure.
Sarah: I mean, that seems to be something of a hallmark with a very specific subset of contemporary erotica, specifically in-, involving motorcycle clubs or gangs or groups of men.
Jane: Well, I mean, I’m trying to think of – there’s this one author who – Pepper Winters. I mean, she specializes in dark romance where the heroes are basically, you know, they really are rapists. There’s another author, Nashoda Rose, who had a character who, who kidnapped his girlfriend because his white slaver father made him do it, and then he proceeds to humiliate her in front of his father for her protection, and then later just is able to somehow escape with her, just because it was time, and it was just too dangerous for her to be there any longer. I felt that was all really gratuitous.
Sarah: [Laughs] You don’t say.
Jane: So, but, but there’s a lot, there’s a huge part of the readership – and I don’t know what the readership is; I think we’ve talked a little before about how 50 Shades had brought in a lot of new readers, and they’re not necessarily romance readers.
Sarah: No.
Jane: And I, and I suppose these books – I don’t know if they’re marketed as romance or if their marketed as dark erotica or what they are. I don’t find them particularly romantic, but I can see how they can be compelling reads, and I do think that those readers of those books and of those authors expect a certain darkness, a certain anti-hero that you wouldn’t find in other books. I, I think it’ll be interesting; Pepper Winters was picked up by Grand Central, so I’ll be interested in seeing what kinds of books that she is able to publish through mainstream romance.
Sarah: And how are they going to market them?
Jane: Right, exactly.
Sarah: I mean, that’s already a challenge for films that are sexually violent. Those seem to get a sort of art house, small market approach. Like, they know this is not going to be a big tent-pole blockbuster. This is about a girl who’s raped and put in a box. Like, that, there’s, there’s an understanding that this is a very specific kind of film. It’s in, it’s, it’ll be, I’m curious to see how they’re going to market those books. Are they going to be like, romance! This is for you! And then a large population of romance readers are going to be like, no. No, no, no, no, no, that’s not for me. No. Nonono.
Jane: Yeah.
Sarah: And do they, do they own the content up front, or is it up to reviewers to say, yo, heads up! There’s violence in there.
Jane: Yeah, the, the problem is, is those readers who aren’t online –
Sarah: No.
Jane: – who are just casual in the bookstore. I don’t know. You know, there, it, it was – a couple of her books have been really popular, Pepper Winters, and so there’s certainly an appetite for them, and maybe it’s just that readers like to be shocked. I don’t know.
Sarah: Yep.
Jane: It, I don’t know. I did read the book, I did read one of her books. I thought it was just, it was too much rape for me. Like, the girl in the book is raped, like, three different times by three different sets of people.
Sarah: Okay, no. No. No. Ah, no.
Jane: But, but it was really popular. I always read these books to see, like, what, what is making them really popular?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jane: I don’t always understand it, and I’m not going to shame a person for their reading tastes, and – I just don’t – it wasn’t for me.
Sarah: I – oh, no, I don’t want to shame somebody for their reading tastes either, and that’s not what I intend to do, but I do know exactly what you mean by, I, I want to figure out what people see in this. ‘Cause I, I always have that alienating, wait, everyone else gave this five stars, and I kind of want to set it on fire. What’s wrong with me?
Jane: [Laughs]
Sarah: I have that experience all the time! Regularly, actually. Every time you recommend a book, pretty much. [Laughs] Jane liked this! Why do I want to set it on fire? What’s wrong with me? [Laughs]
Jane: Ohh.
Sarah: If anyone has ideas of how a, a warning or a, just a reference database of does this book contain rape? How that could be built, what it would look like, and what’s the easiest way to get that started, is, there’s probably someone listening who’s a programmer who’s like, ooh, ooh, ooh, I know exactly how to do this! It’ll take fourteen hours, and I can do it in my sleep! Like, somebody knows how to do this. I’m not that person, but I bet someone listening has an idea of how this could work. I feel like I’m, I’m, I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth, because on one hand I want accurate portrayals of sexuality, and I want women’s sexual experiences and life experiences to be represented in romance, and I want everyone to have the opportunity to see a piece of their own identity and experience in the books that they read, and that includes sexual experience and personal experience and, you know, familial experience, but at the same time, I want to be cognizant of the fact that sexual violence and sexual assault are intensely difficult and dangerous places for some people to go. Like, like Sage said, this is not a place where she can go in her imagination. And I, and I want to be respectful and mindful of that too, so it’s – I feel like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth, but both parts are important. You know what I mean?
Jane: Oh, I don’t think it’s talking about – I think you’re saying writers should have the freedom to write whatever they want, but readers deserve, especially those who’ve suffered the traumatic assaults, to be warned in, of, of dangers in their safe place, and I do think that as much as reviews can help, there’s nothing wrong with the author or the publisher saying, you know, hey, this has a rape in the romance, and – you know, there are some stories that are specifically about forced seduction, and, and not just forced seduction but, you know, the acting out of the rape fantasy, and that’s a very popular fantasy. There should, everybody should, not everybody, but that story should be allowed to be told. We shouldn’t be censoring that. But at the same time, I think it, readers deserve to have some awareness or openness about the types of stories that they could potentially be reading.
Sarah: But, but –
Jane: I, I do think that there’s a way to balance that without inhibiting creativity.
Sarah: I, I agree with you. Wasn’t there a Katie Porter that, where the, where the, where the couple wanted to explore – yes, it’s Hard Way by Katie Porter. “Warning: Time to put the kidding aside. Although 100% consensual between a husband and wife, this book contains violent sex that, in some scenes, will appear forced. Readers sensitive to rape scenarios should proceed with caution.” And yet this book has 147 ratings and 3.8 average on Goodreads. I mean, some people saw that and were like, okay, I’m in, let’s do this.
Jane: Well, I mean, one of my favorite Cara McKenna books is the Willing Victim, and the girl in the story really wants that experience, and the guy wants to give it to her, and I think that that’s perfectly healthy.
Sarah: Are there any authors that you think that Sage should try? Or books that you think she should try, specifically in historical?
Jane: Well, you know who she should not try?
Sarah: That’s also a valid question! [Laughs]
Jane: Mary Jo Putney writes a lot of her books, both male and female suffer some kind of rape in their past.
Sarah: Yeah, that, I, yeah, don’t go near there.
Jane: Susan Johnson, Forbidden or Pure Sin, Outlaw; there’s no rape in those books, and they’re very sensual.
Sarah: I was thinking that some of the more classic Regencies might also appeal to her, because there’s a lot of emotional, emotional tension and, and an emotional richness with very little overt sexual content.
Jane: Right, I like Joan Smith and Joan Wolfe.
Sarah: You like Joans in the Regency.
Jane: Joans in the Regency. I mean, Mary Balogh, some of her books have rape, so I don’t feel like I can say, oh, yeah, just read Mary Balogh.
Sarah: I think Edith Layton, Edith Layton books would be good.
Jane: Yeah.
Sarah: And Loretta Chase’s Regencies.
Jane: You know what I would really love is to see Arnette Lamb’s books – I thought I read something about her books being sold, or her – ‘cause she’s passed away, so her estate had to make a deal about the republication of her books in digital, but I thought I read something that’s, her books were coming out, and I don’t remember her books having a lot of sexual violence in the past. Stay away from Jude Deveraux!
Sarah: Yeah, don’t, don’t, don’t go near there. That’s a big no. Actually, I’m starting a No list right now. No! [Laughs]
Jane: So, see it’s not a, it’s not a contemporary thing –
Sarah: No.
Jane: Do you know what I’m saying? Rape in romance has long been a trope in use for both men and women.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely.
Jane: Robin Schone, like, Robin Schone for the longest time, like, every, every male protagonist had been raped as a child.
Sarah: It’s definitely not just a, a, a current thing. Problem is that it’s so often used lately, in the past few years, as quick character dimensional building by inserting a sexual traumatic event in the backstory of a heroine, or a hero, that way instant emotional and, and personal complexity. No, no. That’s, that’s not how that works, and also the curing of sexual trauma with one magic sexual experience. That also bugs the crap out of me. But rape in romance has a, a long and storied history. It goes back quite a ways.
Jane: Yes.
Sarah: So, you know, stay away from, like, you know, Virginia Henley, Kathleen Woodiwiss. The, the old ones. If there’s – if you find it in the used bookstore and someone is wearing fuchsia, that’s a pretty good chance that there might be forced seduction at the very least. And if it’s fuchsia and teal, just back away slowly and go to another section.
Jane: Now, I haven’t read a lot of historicals recently, so I’m kind of a back –
Sarah: Well, that’s ‘cause you killed the genre, Jane!
Jane: I know!
Sarah: [Laughs] You killed it! You killed it dead!
Jane: So, I ruined it for everybody –
Sarah: Yeah, you fucked it all up for me; thanks a lot!
[Laughter]
Jane: Okay –
Sarah: God damn it, Jane! [Laughs]
Jane: – so, so anyway – [laughs]
Sarah: So, tell me what you’re reading.
Jane: Oh, I knew you were going to ask me that.
Sarah: I do have a book I want to tell you about, actually.
Jane: The sad thing is, is I haven’t read anything that’s really spectacular. Probably the best thing I’ve read recently was Claudia Connor’s Worth the Fall. I think this book was self published for a while. I, I might be wrong, but I had stayed away from it because it’s about a pregnant woman who’s just recently been widowed who has four kids! I don’t like kids in books. [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s a lot of kids in a book.
Jane: And, yeah, so, I don’t like even one kid in a book, and she’s got four and one in the oven, and she’s falling in love with some Navy SEAL on leave for a week. I mean, how is that going to happen, right? But I actually ended up liking it. The romance is slow and, and measured, and I felt like it was appropriate for the time and place and given their circumstances, and it, and, you know, it doesn’t just last for that week. It, it, they meet and they fall for each other in that week, and then they start seeing each other after the vacation is over, but it’s hampered by the fact that they live so far away from each other. And so they visit, and then they have to make a decision about, you know, big decisions about their lives based on a small time in, that they’ve met each other. And I liked that. I thought that that was, I mean, genuine and, and it was much better than I thought it was going to be, so –
Sarah: That’s a lot to start off a book with. She’s pregnant, she has four kids, she’s recently widowed, and they’re meeting on vacation.
Jane: Yeah. I guess the, there are a couple things that the author does that I really liked, and one, the kids were shown as being exhausting, as they always are, but the mother was very competent, and she wasn’t impoverished, so, you know, she, she had resources and funds, and she was, she never appeared to be overwhelmed by having the kids, and she was really excited about having the kid. Her husband, who had pa-, who had died, I think, in a plane crash, had, had spent more time working than with his family, so she never had a real sense of connection with him. The SEAL – I think his name was Matt – he came from a really large family, six brothers, one sister. He had always wanted a family –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jane: – and, and he loved kids, and it was, he had a very easy way with the kids, so I think that I wasn’t overwhelmed because none of the characters were overwhelmed.
Sarah: That’s good, and they didn’t become plot moppets.
Jane: I mean, all kids to some extent do, but I, but her kids were an important part of the plot, you know.
Sarah: Yeah.
Jane: For example, later in the book, they meet, she meets his family, and his mother is kind of standoffish because she wanted her son to have his own family.
Sarah: Right, and not inherit someone else’s.
Jane: Right, which was real hurtful, obviously, for the heroine, but you know, I’ve, I started reading the second book, and they still have, it’s still, they still just have the five kids that she had with her previous husband, and so there’s no attempt to, for them to make babies. Now, they’d probably make babies because they love kids and they’re financially capable of supporting those kids –
Sarah: And if you’ve already got five, you know –
Jane: Right, one more, but I liked that it wasn’t, he needed a kid of his own –
Sarah: Right.
Jane: It was that he fell in love with the kids, and they became his own.
Sarah: That’s like the, the first Fast Track novel by Erin McCarthy, Flat-Out Sexy. I don’t want to spoil it, because it’s a bit of a plot point, but the heroine is a widow, and she has kids and doesn’t think that the hero, who is younger than she is, would be interested in her for, for a long-term relationship because not only is he younger but she has kids, and she’s not too keen on going through baby boot camp and doesn’t want another baby. Which I thought was really interesting because, you know, there’s, there’s a, a, fecundity is very valued in romance. Fertility and virginity. We have a fertility and a virginity problem in romance. We like a lot of it, both of them, which is probably a bit problem-, it’s a bit complicated to have both fertility and virginity, particularly in that order.
Jane: I think I emailed you this. So, the other day I was asking for book recommendations on Twitter –
Sarah: Yes!
Jane: – and a couple people recommended a book to me, and I went and bought it because I think I had gotten three recommendations for it. It was a post-apocalyptic YA, and it, it looked like it had a romance, and I start it, and I get – there’s some, like, my Spidey sense went up when I started it, and I’m like, I wonder about the ending of this book.
Sarah: Uh-oh.
Jane: So I go to the ending, and it ends in a cliffhanger –
Sarah: NOOO!
Jane: – and there’s no romantic entanglement that’s resolved, and then, and the worst part, the very worst part, the next book doesn’t come out until November 2015. The first book was published in, like, June or July of 2015.
Sarah: Oh, no.
Jane: So I stopped reading it right there. I was really kind of pissed off.
Sarah: Oh, no, that’s not okay.
Jane: Yeah, so, yeah. I was mad about that. Oh, oh, I read Hero by Sam Young, and I have to admit that I had kind of, after On Dublin Street, kind of lost my love affair with Sam Young. I liked the second book, didn’t much like the third book. I don’t even know if I finished the fourth book, and I did not even start the fifth.
Sarah: Was that Before Jamaica Lane?
Jane: [Laughs] I think that was the one that I started and never finished.
Sarah: [Laughs] There’s only a little bit of history built up in the name, just a little bit.
Jane: So – [laughs] – so, and the four-, and the, and the fifth book I didn’t even start, but Hero by Sam Young is just kind of this, you know, billionaire’s assistant story, but it all worked out for me, and I really enjoyed it, and I think anyone who liked On Dublin Street will like Hero, and I feel like she’s kind of found her groove again, moving away from her On Dublin Streetcharacters. I thought the ending kind of had some extra additions that were unnecessary, but, and didn’t kind of, didn’t quite fit with the entire storyline, but I did like it, so I recommend that.
Oh, I, I read this book Loving Lawson, which was on, a Kindle Unlimited book, so free. [Laughs] I guess it’s not free. That’s the, that’s, that’s kind of a, I don’t know what the word is, but it’s a fallacy that we’ve built up in our minds, right? We pay monthly for it, so it’s not free.
Sarah: Yep.
Jane: But I, every time I see it I’m like, oh, that book is free! But it’s not. [Laughs]
Sarah: I, I have, I have been really enjoying using Scribd –
Jane: Yes, yes!
Sarah: – for that, for that reason. Like, okay, I already, well, I’m still within my three-month free trial, which is –
Jane: Oh, so it’s truly free for you.
Sarah: It’s truly free for me until, like, February, and I have a date on my calendar to ask myself, do you want to renew? And right now, the answer is, oh, yes! Because for $8.99 a month, I am reading far more than $9 worth of books that I would have paid for. Like, I just, like, I just lined up all of Sarah Morgan’s backlist and read them one after the other, and I didn’t have to pay for one of the, ‘cause they were all in there. I loved it.
Jane: I read the Christina Lauren backlist through Scribd, and those books are, like $7.99, so –
Sarah: Which one is Christina -? Is that Christina Lauren with, like, Dirty Filthy Rotten Boy?
Jane: Yes, yes, yes.
Sarah: Spanky Schluffy Schmutzy Boy? [Laughs]
Jane: Yes. I hate those titles, I hate the covers.
Sarah: I need to do a re-, I need to do a Jewish remix of them. Schmutzy Schmutzy Stinky Boy. [Laughs] Did, when I did the podcast interview with Angie she was saying that if you like fantasy, HarperCollins is in there, and they have all of Dorchester’s backlist, so I have been reading the Marjorie Liu books, which I had never read before – they’re in there; why not? – and –
Jane: And C. L. Wilson would be in there.
Sarah: C. L. Wilson’s in there, Marjorie Liu’s in there, all the Dorchester stuff is in there. I had never read the original Dirk & Steele books. They’re a little bit too much suspense and gore. There’s a lot of, there’s – I’ve, I’m only, like, thirty-three percent in and I’ve already seen some intestines, so my ability to continue may be a little bit compromised, ‘cause I’m not a big fan of entrails in my romance, but still, this is great! Like, I got the whole damn backlist just waiting for me.
Jane: I think the problem with Scribd is its discovery features. Like, there is no easy way to browse –
Sarah: Oh, it sucks.
Jane: – and, and whatever they need to do to spend money on improving that – [laughs] – is money well spent.
Sarah: You have to know what you’re looking for to find it.
Jane: You have – exactly. There’s no – they, I don’t know what they need. I need, they need some kind of Top 10 list or Top 100 list or something, but whatever they’ve got going on, it’s not working.
Sarah: You know what would be great for them? Once or twice a month, a Top 10 Undiscovered Gems list. If you like fantasy, here are ten books from, you know, more than five years ago that are part of Scribd that you should try. Boom. That would be an easy way to curate topical content for Scribd. You’re welcome, Scribd! Take that, take that idea and run to the bank. Run, run quickly.
So what else are you reading?
Jane: So I read Loving Lawson, that’s that “freebie,” and I thought it was very sweet. It’s about this girl who got pregnant with her boyfriend, and then he goes to prison for a drug deal, and so she breaks up with him – [laughs] – as she should, and his older brother, Lawson, she goes to him because she need, her mother has kicked her out and she needs a place to stay, so he tells her to come live with him in his apartment, and then they fall for each other, which is pretty for-, you know, it’s kind of forbidden ‘cause it’s his younger brother, and the younger brother’s in prison, but I ended up liking it because the characters are so nice.
Sarah: Who is this by?
Jane: R. J. Lewis?
Sarah: R. J. Lewis.
Jane: And it ends with some type of a cliffhanger, but the couple is together, so it was a cliffhanger that I thought was manageable.
Sarah: As long as the romantic plotline is somewhat resolved, I’m okay with larger-issue cliffhangers that continue the book onto another one. You know what I mean?
Jane: Right, and you can – you know, this is a couple who don’t make very much money. She, like, waits tables, and he fights and also, I can’t remember what else he does for income, but it’s, they’re, it’s a very hardscrabble life that they lead. It’s not a billionaire story, and so, you can kind of see their impoverished circumstances leading them down into, into danger, not because they wouldn’t be able to survive on their own, but because some of their, some of the younger brother’s problems, ex-boyfriend’s problems, come back to haunt them in ways that they had not anticipated and imperil them further. And so that’s kind of the overriding plotline that was not resolved in the first book. Now could it be resolved in a regular-sized book? Maybe, ‘cause it’s, you know, I don’t know, it’s 3800 locations, which is, I don’t know, 50-, 60,000 words.
Sarah: That’s not terrible.
Jane: No, so, I mean, you know, it could have been one book in the past, but it’s two books now, or however many. The other book I read was A Gentleman in the Street by Alisha Rai.
Sarah: That’s the book I was going to tell you about!
Jane: Okay. [Laughs]
Sarah: Did you like it?
Jane: Well, I did and I didn’t. I liked all of the parts with Jacob and Akira –
Sarah: Uh-huh.
Jane: – when they were together and they were struggling with their emotional hang-ups and so forth, but – and this is just an it’s not me, it’s not you, it’s me thing – the group sex scenes never do anything for me, and I, I always feel like those are almost shows and displays rather than in-, moments of intimacy. Those scenes and that sort of lifestyle that they have doesn’t, I don’t find appealing.
Sarah: So that was not for you.
Jane: No. And that, that’s the problem I have with the, the Kit Rocha books now. It’s so much more, so much about group sex and so much about being on display and, and not enough, for me, one-on-one contact. But I did like it, and I thought that she did some great things in kind of inverting the, the billionaire trope.
Sarah: Guess what.
Jane: You loved it.
Sarah: I am in the middle of reading it, and I totally disagree with you! Can you believe that?
Jane: [Laughs]
Sarah: I know, it’s shocking, isn’t it? No one who’s listening is surprised in the least. I am in the middle of reading it. [Laughs] I have to be, I have to be a little circumspect, because even though I’m reading on my phone, my older son has a daily reading requirement, and so at bedtime we, you know, hop into his bed and set the timer so that he knows he’s read long enough, and we’re reading together, and I, I just didn’t want to read this anywhere near my children. Like, even though if they read over my shoulder, everything on the page would completely sail over their heads and they would not understand it, and they’re probably not interested in what I’m reading anyway, I could not read this around my kids, because there is a lot of very intense sex. For me, the group sex scenes work, because for Akira, that’s part of her character, and in order for Jacob to accept her as the person that she is, which includes her sexuality and a voracious sexual appetite which she is utterly not ashamed of, which I thought was so awesome, that’s part of who she is, and he has to be prepared to accept that and that she’s not going to accept and tone down her sexuality to be with him, and she’s not going to compromise that part of herself to make him more comfortable. He needs to be aware of who she is and how she lives her life, because she’s not willing to change everything about herself to be acceptable to him or to anyone else. The theme of being acceptable to other people’s definitions is such a major thing for Akira, I understood that, and I understood the purpose of the group sex scenes, and I thought they were, I thought they were fascinating in terms of just the logistics. Like, how many rooms are on that level of her house? Do they connect? Where’s the bathroom? Do you have, like, you know, special showers? Like, is there lube just hidden in the drawers? Like, how does this work logistically? Like, you know, when you have a party and you make sure there’s enough ice, and you make sure there’s enough cups, how do you logistically prepare for orgy times? Like, that, that I didn’t expect to be in the book, but I was curious.
Jane: Well, I, I agree with everything that you say, that it was important for her to have him accept her type of sexuality activity –
Sarah: Mm-hmm
Jane: – and that he did. And that, and I liked how he said, you know, I might not have acted these out, but I have an active imagination, and it all worked for me from that standpoint. Here’s what I –
Sarah: But that’s just not what you like to read.
Jane: No, and it’s not just what I like, not what I like to read, but here’s one of the dilemmas I had with that, and that is Akira spends her whole life rebelling against her mother, so I couldn’t figure out whether Akira was the person she wanted to be or whether she was the person who she created as a result of rebellion against her mother.
Sarah: Was she who she was genuinely, or was she who, was she who she was as an antithesis to expectations?
Jane: Yes.
Sarah: I think that’s a totally fair question. I haven’t fi-, I haven’t finished the book yet, so I’ll be curious to see if I think that question is answered.
Jane: Well, you have a very good day, and I’m sorry for ruining historicals for you.
Sarah: Oh, that’s all right, I’ll be okay. I’ve got group sex to read! I just can’t read it when my kids are around. [Laughs]
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this week’s podcast. I hope you enjoyed our discussion and it wasn’t too upsetting for you if this is something that’s difficult for you to think about or talk about. I would really like to know what you think. Do you think there should be a database of warnings about rape or sexual aggressive content in romance? Do you, do you think that could work? Do you think that other readers would find that useful? I was envisioning while I was editing a sort of red/yellow/green system where you pull up the title of the book, and if it’s green, no rape, please drive through. If it’s yellow, rape in the backstory, rape as a character development, rape happens off screen, and if it’s red, there be rape, go ye away. But that might be too simplistic a system to help correctly identify the type of scenes and content that might trigger someone. So I am really curious what you think, and I would love to hear your ideas, or if you think this is a terrible idea, I would like to know why.
You can email us, as always, at [email protected], or you can call our Google voice number, which is 1-201-371-DBSA. And it occurred to me, because a lot of the things I learn to do I figure out by doing them, that if you have discovered the podcast and aren’t aware that there’s a whole website thing – two websites, actually – connected to the podcast and you are looking for the podcast entry and the information on the books, that’s at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/
This podcast was brought to you by Berkley, publisher of Only for You, the brand-new novel from Beth Kery, author of the New York Times bestseller Because You Are Mine.
And the music that you are listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. This is Deviations Project, and I just bought the whole damn album. This is from the album Adeste Fiddles, still the best holiday album title ever. This is “The Holly and the Ivy” as they have remixed and recreated it, and I think it’s pretty awesome!
Thank you again for listening, and on behalf of Sage and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.
[pretty awesome music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
I absolutely think that a database with at least some basic trigger warnings would be a great resource for the many, many readers who are triggered by sexual violence (or other types of violence)
I also realized, while listening, that I am not as consistent as I could be, about including trigger warnings on the top of my reviews. Thank you for helping me become more considerate towards fellow readers and people in general!
A database would work for sure. I also think it would be socially responsible of publishers to provide this service themselves.
It could also be simpler/cheaper if you use the hive mind of Tumblr. Some type of community-run tumblr (or even run by one person) where a reader could submit an ask about a book and the community could find that information out as a service. Followers of the tumblr could also answer by adding notes to the post.
I’m not familiar with the Amazon forums and I’m sure something similar could be done.
I can imagine it’s tiring for Sage to have to comb through review after review trying to see if there is even the threat of assault let alone a rape. I’ve always found the romance community to be extremely generous, so I bet with enough followers (maybe even authors themselves following), solutions could be found pretty easily and quickly.
While I think trigger warnings are a good idea, they could be trickier in practice. What if the rape is something that’s a big surprise, revealed towards the end of the book? What if it’s something mentioned but never dwelled on (like in Lisa Kleypas’ STRANGER IN MY ARMS, when we’re told early on her husband would force himself on her)? What if it happens to a secondary character? And where would a trigger warning be placed: On the cover, like a video game description? On the back cover, after the basic summary? In the title page?
@Jim:
I agree, the particulars could get intricate, especially because, as I said and Sage said as well in the episode, what triggers one person is totally ok for another. The grey areas are difficult, but I still think this can be done. On to ponder!
I think the question of what to add to a trigger warning list, and how, would be more complicated for a publisher than for a reviewer (or in a reader maintained database).
If or when the publisher includes these warnings, they are visible to all and sundry, and they may irritate people who a) can read anything and everything safely, and b) abhor knowing anything about a story.
However, a database that announces itself as a repository of potential trigger warnings would not have that problem–anyone going there would know they are asking for these sort of so-called spoilers.
And heck, publishers who want their readers to feel safe, could point them to that same database when in doubt–something along the lines of, “potentially problematic content, go for more” or some such, perhaps?
There is a website regarding movies called DoesTheDogDie.com with information regarding whether animals die or appear to die in movies. I think this could be a good model for how a book trigger warning website could work.
If it helps, I can probably whip up something similar to DoesTheDogDie.com over the weekend. But I will need the trigger info to come from you guys. Speaking of which, a “cruelty to animals” tag could also come in handy, as that is my trigger, and I really really would like to avoid those scenes/books if possible.
@Kay: Can you email me? sarah AT smartbitchestrashybooks DOT com
I have many, many opinions about this, as someone who’s also triggered by rape and abuse. I like how Riptide handles it – but I wish their warnings gave more details. They use the same non-con / dub-con warnings for such a wide range of situations – from multiple on page scenes of rape between the h/h to two paragraphs about an assault that happened off page and in the past – that I’ll still sometimes do my own research, especially if the rest of the book sounds good and I’m trying to figure out if I can handle it.
A database sounds great. I’d like to see more information than just, is there rape? I’d like to know – is the hero the rapist? Is the rape on page? Is it during the storyline or in the past? And probably other things too, but those are the biggies. Oh – and how seriously is the rape taken? Are there any neg consequences?
I second the database. While rape isn’t a triggering subject for me (not that I wish the heroine is raped, of course, and especially NOT by the hero) I am, for example, completely turn down by BDSM, not even how light. D/s storylines are often mentioned in blurbs, but if there could be a database for – for example – dividing “vanilla” erotica and erotica with bondage/spanking/various kinks, that would be great. Maybe it already exists and I don’t know it.
One thing I’ve always loved about fanfiction is the headers above each story that give the content or kink/squick warnings. One might read, for example, “Violence, threat of rape, bondage, suicidal thoughts.” And one reader might read that and think, “Not for me,” while another might think, “Heck yeah, I’m reading that one!”
I would love to put such content warnings in my book descriptions, but the problem is with the retailers. Companies like Apple and Amazon are still squeamish about this stuff, and if you put content warnings in your book description, you run a very real risk of ending up in the Amazon “dungeon” where they block visibility to your book. Usually it’s a cover issue that lands a book in the dungeon, in which case the author or publisher can change the cover and request that Amazon re-evaluate it, but I’ve also heard of cases where Amazon put the book in the dungeon because of the description/blurb.
Publishers really do need to make this kind of info readily accessible… at the very least, to booksellers and bloggers, who are recommending books every day. When I was a bookseller, I remember handselling a lit fic book to a regular that should have been right up her alley, only to have her come back the next week and tell me about a graphic rape scene in it. If I’d known that on the front end, it would have changed how I talked about that book with customers.
I’ve seen a lot of Amazon and Good Reads, particularly the dark erotica and contemporaries, contain Trigger Warnings in the description of the book. Not the review section, but the book description – often it will state TRIGGER: this book contains sexual violence and mature content, not recommended for younger readers. Or…something along the lines that situations containing rape and/or sexual abuse are in this book.
The problem though, as expressed in both your podcast and in the comments above, is identifying what would be considered a rape or sexual violence trigger? Take for example, the books by Courtney Milan, to my knowledge the only one that has an actual rape in it is The Governess Affair, which I avoided for that reason. (After having read a slew of books with rape and sexual violence – the contemporaries are actually worse than some of the historicals – I reached a point in which I just can’t read it any longer. Have the same problem with books about serial killers/serial rapists – which seems to be a popular trope in the urban fantasy and mystery/suspense genre. Ive been binge reading romance novels often to get away from the graphic violence.) Unveiled – doesn’t have rape, it does have a seduction scene, which some readers might consider…forceful? But I didn’t find it so. Unclaimed doesn’t have rape, for a while I thought it would, but no that wasn’t the pain the heroine was trying to overcome. Rape is sort of mentioned as back story in Heiress Effect and The Duchess War, but vaguely. Is vague okay for someone like Sage? I ran into this same issue with fanfic reading and writing. Also there are instances in which it could be considered a spoiler – for example, if it’s a big internal problem for the hero or heroine and the central mystery is figuring out what that big deal is?
One writer to avoid – if you have issues with sexual violence or rape is Judith McNaught. Also, definitely, Rosemary Rodgers – who in some respects was even more graphic than Kathleen Woodwiss.
I’m not sure if Meredith Duran’s books are considered to have it. I certainly don’t see it – but forceful seduction to some readers is non-consensual and a trigger. Georgette Heyer doesn’t but there’s no sex in hers either. Eloisa James didn’t…or I don’t remember any.
It is odd that so many do have rape or forceful seduction…almost as if the bedroom is seen as a battlefield for the characters? I think it may be due to how writers often view sex scenes as action scenes – and portraying the violence or enhancing it – enhances conflict and makes it more interesting? Will she surrender/submit to him? Will he surrender/submit to her? Whose the winner? Or will they come together?
I think – it’s done in books for the same reason you might have a shoot-out or a sword fight in another novel – as a way of providing suspense. Also, how will the characters ever get past THAT? Poses a challenge to the writer, and another bit of suspense. I think that’s why so many readers and writers like it – it’s a problem they can’t figure out how to resolve. And books are great ways of exploring how to resolve seemingly impossible problems or dilemmas…in a safe way?
Supplying a trigger warning may for some novels spoil that suspense. So how do you get around that? Some people, like myself, don’t mind spoilers when it comes to romance novels. But others, do. So, you’d need to find a way to hide the spoilers from those who mind them and provide for those that don’t. (ie. spoiler warning).
I agree – the details may be a spoiler, so I’m envisioning a link to more information with the caveat that it may contain spoilers. Whether to read them is up to the individual in that case.
The explanation would be really helpful, I think, where there are “grey areas.”
Hello,
I hope that it is okay if I do a small plug here, but we are actually working on what has been suggested in the pod cast so I hope that it is relevant. We have built a romance book search engine that allows you to search for books by adding (or excluding) as many keywords, topics and themes as you like (we have over 100 such tags).
In particular, being aware that reading about such things can be devastating, we also have the tags ‘rape’ and ‘abuse’ in a ‘potential trigger’ subsection. So for people who can’t / don’t want to read about these things, they can just exclude these topics, and no book that would have them would show up in their results.
We are still working on improving the tagging, but there are already lots and lots of books with these topics we have tagged. So hopefully it will already be really helpful when people are looking for new reading material.
Marie
Stay away, far, far, *far* away from Jo Goodman’s books. I honestly can’t think of a single book of hers that I’ve read where sexual assault isn’t directly or somewhat obliquely referenced by either the hero or heroine or a major secondary character. Both in terms of past history and/or the threat of during the course of the story.
I have to add, this deal isn’t exclusive to romance novels – I see it fairly often in fantasy novels (think Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series). It would probably be a benefit to expand to books with romantic elements.
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I am a survivor, and I am one of those women who enjoys and find comfort in reading about rape scenes and women who overcome them. For me it’s a way to overcome my own rape in my imagination. I have just started blogging but I think it’s important when we all do our reviews to include these warnings because not everyone is like me.
I’ll be including trigger warnings in any reviews I do of books that have this content regardless of the fact that it doesn’t bother me.
Hi Sarah and Jane,
I enjoyed this podcast quite a bit as it as I receive a lot of email at our website about this topic.
We actually have the ability in our database at Eye On Romance to add in identifiers for rape and/or sexual assault. I’ll be working on implementing this next week. I think this is a GREAT idea and will really enrich a readers quest for books that suit them.
Well done! I’m catching up on your podcasts, which will take me a while but are loving them so far.
Tara
tara@eyeonromance.com
http://www.eyeonromance.com
Hi Guys,
I really enjoyed this episode. Seriously, I enjoy ALL the episodes. I am reading Erin McCarthy’s, Hot Finish, and it contains a trigger of mine regarding miscarriage. I think I am going to go on with the book, but it was a surprise. The first in the series is funny and light, and I absolutely missed any foreshadowing that this would be an issue. I admit I bought the book immediately after reading the first in the series, so maybe if I had done my research, I would have avoided this story. Maybe we could one day have trigger codes to go along with the explicitly codes.
Either way, I strongly recommend the Fast Track series.
Thanks so much for your podcast and all the work you guys do. I love it.
Hello! Revisiting this episode as I go through the backlog. Was a database ever created?