Book Review

Book Rant: Breathless by Anne Stuart Made Marian Angry

Marian sent me an email that began:

One thing I love about the new site design is that I discovered all the rants. That reminded me I’d written something similar, so I’ve attached my rant. The book was one of those you’d like to throw to the floor and jump up and down on, except for it being library property. So all you can do is write about it, and maybe share with someone who’ll understand.

Oh, yes. I very much understand the rage that makes your eyeballs feel like maybe they are boiling.

Before you read further: Trigger Warning for rape. 

Also: Spoilers Abound.

And here is Marian’s Book Rant.


Comic portrait of woman on phone with text bubble that reads UNLEASHED RAGE GOES HEREI picked up an Anne Stuart historical romance called Breathless because of the opening. Miranda had been ruined by a man who once kidnapped and raped her, but she was determined not to let him have any more power over her.

So far, so good. Then came the hero, who paid the kidnapper because he has a grudge against Miranda’s brother.

Reading Stuart’s Ice series made me brace for heroes who come this close to killing the heroines, but who also have a reason for their near-sociopathy. In Breathless, here’s the reason for the zero’s grudge: he had a half-sister who was engaged to Miranda’s brother. She shot herself when the brother broke off the engagement. To me, that suggests mental instability. To this zero, it means the entire family must suffer! suffer! suffer!

So he worms his way into Miranda’s life by sabotaging her carriage wheel and saving her. He also calls her “my child” a lot, and that gave me creepy vibes like anything.

Wood walking cane with rounded headBut we’re supposed to pity him because he has facial scars and walks with a cane. I wished Miranda would put the cane where canes should never go.

The zero invites her to a house party where he gets a male guest to grope her, so he can rescue her. She knees Paid Rapist #2 in the groin, but the zero limps into the scene to help, so she thinks he’s a good person.

Until he kidnaps her and tells her if she doesn’t marry him, he’ll kill her younger brother. Oh, he’s fully capable of that, because he once murdered a man. The man’s crime? He stepped on the zero’s pet scorpion.

Miranda agrees to marriage. The zero plans to take her to his distant, tumbledown country estate and get a couple of “brats” (as he puts it) on her. She decides the only way to fight back is to act like she loves it all. So once they reach the estate, complete with a Mrs. Danvers-esque housekeeper, she outdoes Pollyanna in her burbly prattle.

bobble headed statue of Gollum - extra double creepy
“My dove, my pet, my preciousssss.”

This leads to some cringeworthy conversations where they call each other “my dove”, “my pet” and “precious”, not meaning a single saccharine word.

“Precious” made me think of Gollum, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the zero had hissed, “We hateses your family, preciousss, we hateses them forever!”

Then they have sex, because the zero can be a lying, rapist-hiring, murdering scum as long as he’s spectacular in the sack. He forces himself on her, and to her amazement she responds (of course), whereas she never felt any pleasure before (of course).

He thinks, more than once, what a good idea it was to have PR #1 take her virginity, so he can enjoy her without the inconvenience. And it’s so much more exciting to introduce a terrified woman to the joys of sex.

Bastard.

Anyway, he’s much bigger than PR #1 (of course) and gives her multiple orgasms lying down, standing up, etc. But because her family still needs to suffer! suffer! suffer! he plans to marry her before this crowd of perverts he knows, and the highlight of the ceremony is every pervert raping the bride. Miranda is still pretending to be delighted, so she goes along with it. By then I was just watching the trainwreck.

She keeps thinking he’ll stop at the last moment. But no, he allows her to be restrained, gagged and blindfolded by the perverts. Just as they’re about to pull her legs apart, though, he sees PR #1 in the crowd. So he puts her back in the carriage and drives off.

It didn’t get much better from there, for me. I don’t know what kind of grovel would have even begun to make up for this, but there was none. On the second-to-last page of the book, she asked if he loved her and he replied: “I love no one.” So they had amazing sex yet again.

I suppose they live happily ever after, because if she can take kidnapping, rape, attempted gang-rape and a threat to murder her brother, what can’t she endure? I might have checked out the other books in the series, but the start of the next one referred to her children, and the idea of kids being anywhere near a deranged, vicious and narcissistic creep like that zero ruined any atmosphere of romance for me.

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Breathless by Anne Stuart

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  1. Nicole says:

    O.o

    I don’t think that’s a book for me… eep.

  2. Ellie says:

    Trees DIED for this “book”? Oh no. I don’t dare read this book. I might go back in time, find this fictional character, and beat him to death – with this book.

  3. Priscilla says:

    I’m horrified that a librarian put this in the collection.

  4. Amanda says:

    I haven’t read this book (never will) but from reading this I can safely say I would have I hateses the Zero.

  5. Astrakhan says:

    “The man’s crime? He stepped on the zero’s pet scorpion.”

    I can’t remember a romance novel with a stronger invocation of Poe’s Law (good satire is indistinguishable from insanity).

  6. Spinster says:

    This is one of those rants/reviews I really wish the author would swing by and comment on.

  7. Spinster says:

    This is one of those rants/reviews I really wish the author (of the book) would swing by and comment on.

  8. kd says:

    WTF. And this terrible book was published in 2010?

  9. KR Wilburn says:

    There’s a quote from a Jude Deveraux book that has always stuck with me. I don’t have the book in front of me so I won’t quote verbatim but the gist is that an editor told the MC that if she didn’t have the hero rape the heroine, nobody would believe that the hero was virile. The MC replied that if the hero raped the heroine, then he wasn’t a hero at all.

    This sums up how I feel about this description. You know something is off when even the description makes me feel like I need to take a scalding hot bath.

  10. Beth K. says:

    I read this! Also because I loved the Ice series. I remember sharing these feelings. Like, wtf. And the whole “black arts” aspect of it was just bizarre. This book is 100% dubious consent.

  11. Beth K. says:

    Or I should clarify, the interactions between “H” and h are dubious at best.

  12. jimthered says:

    Oddly, the “wedding-raping perverts” description reminded me of another book: DARKER THAN LOVE, a Black Lace novel by Kristina LLoyd (spoilers follow, for a book that was first published back in 1998). In the book, Clarissa is betrothed to the decadent Lord Marldon, but falls for the noble artist Gabriel. When Marldon kidnaps her (and engages in lots of wild sex), Gabriel follows and gets captured as well. Near the end of the book, Marldon’s evil plan (which he tells Clarissa) is to have the wedding with, essentially, a roomful of perverts; have Clarissa take a powerful aphrodisiac; and have all the guests take her: “‘Soon,’ continued Marldon, ‘you will be so needful and desperate that, when I lead you on to that stage, you will writhe and plead for a man’s cock. My guests will queue up to satisfy you, Clarissa. One by one, they will give you what you beg for, and still you won’t be sated, still you will be crying for more.'” However, the scheme is ruined by Clarissa’s friend undercover as a serving girl, who gives Clarissa a non-spiked drink. But one thing about many older Black Lace novels is that the villains are selfish, evil, and unreformed, but also sexy, kinky, and thrilling (so it’s not just the hero who gives the heroine multiple orgasms.) Also, author Kristina LLoyd has a great homepage http://kristinalloyd.wordpress.com/ where she discusses her works and readings.

  13. LML says:

    Pet scorpion??

  14. denise says:

    creepy

  15. FParkar says:

    Oh my god! That sounds like the most atrocious storyline ever! How on earth did that get published??!! I’m absolutely gobsmacked.

  16. Nali says:

    I just… I don’t…
    I. Can’t. Even.

    If you told me this was published 20 years ago, I would roll my eyes and say “Figures. That’s fairly tame, really.”

    Now? It isn’t that I don’t believe the ranter, it is just that my brain is demanding proof that this actually happened. Of course, I think it would have the same “Nuh-uh. That did NOT just happen!” reaction if the book was in front of me.

    The WTFery is strong in this one. That is beyond cracktastic. (And I normally LIKE cracktastic, in a weird, black humor sort of way.)

  17. Jules says:

    Ok… admission time. I’ve read this… and I liked it. Anne Stuart is sort of known for writing evil/gamma heroes, so when approached with the attitude of “yes this would be horrible in the real world but this is just a fantasy” I thought the book was actually quite funny. Plus there are some great scenes where the heroine is just as evil right back to the hero.

  18. Chris says:

    I hate this book. If I hadn’t bought it as an ebook I would literally jump up and down on it. I went on huge rants about it when I read it when it was first published. I think the hero is a sociopath and the whole book just grossed me out. It was particularly disappointing because I read the first two books in the series and liked them so it’s not like I didn’t enjoy the author. For me there is a line between anti-hero and just plain psycho and this book crossed it, or rather pole vaulted it.

  19. chacha1 says:

    I haven’t read it, and will never read it, but I hate it.

  20. I haven’t ever read this book and I’m pretty sure I could not get through it.

    On a wide tangent, though, we did once have a “pet” scorpion. True story. We were visiting the in-laws in AZ and my daughter got stung by one. She was fine but the scorpion died of course. However, we found another one in the house and my husband decided to trap it in a jar. Then he decided to stow that jar in the glove compartment for the drive home. I was less than thrilled about this. But we drove the darn thing all the way back to Seattle and my husband settled the thing into a terrarium and fed it crickets. And then one day it just disappeared. I go with the story that the crickets revolted and ate the scorpion but we don’t really know what happened to it. Perhaps someone stepped on it? 🙂

  21. azteclady says:

    Tangent: I’m grateful librarians don’t let their own taste decide which books they buy, but instead offer library patrons the whole spectrum of writing available in the world. Censorship is a big no-no for me.

  22. jw says:

    Such a waste of an okay cover.

  23. Maryy says:

    I must add myself to the list of people who like this book. I love Anne Stuart and in her will forgive heroes that I maybe wouldn’t with other authors. That being said, this is my least favorite of the series. The first two are much, much, better. The first one includes on of my all time favorite heroes.

  24. Beth K. says:

    Off topic, but Bad guys + scorpions on my mind from this blog, and look what popped up in my news feed: ISIS using bombs containing live scorpions! This isn’t funny at all, but it was interesting to note “Although scorpion bombs sound like something out of a modern horror movie, the tactic is actually thousands of years old and was first used by Iraqis fighting against the Roman Empire.” Who knew?!

  25. LenoreJ says:

    Do the scorpions survive being blown up? Wait, sorry, back to the book…..

  26. Andrea says:

    I read the first book or two in this series. Could not handle the wtf rapey-ness. But I was totally blown away by her last gothic romance. So…

  27. Lora says:

    I admit (hangs head) I read and liked this book. My favorite in the series is Ruthless but what I liked about this one is that Miranda was so indomitable and so clever. She liked her independence but was lonely, was attracted to the guy she knew was bad for her. I also love the subplot with her friend and the jewel thief.

  28. Ellie says:

    I read it and it wasn’t my favorite Anne Stuart, but it was slightly redeemed for making me laugh when I read the name of the pub where the hero and heroine stop–The Cock and Swallow. I’m pretty sure it was this book, at least. If I read two AS books in the same month, sometimes I get them mashed up together in my memory.

  29. Bea says:

    Best sum up of a book EVER: “Such a waste of an okay cover.”

    Good one jw!

  30. annieofcleves says:

    I adore Anne Stuart (and secretly hope she chimes in here), but haven’t read this series. I feel like I have to, now. I suspect I’lll be in agreement with Jules & Maryy – I try to explain the Ice series (heroes) to people and it just comes out… bad. But damn, if I didn’t love those books and read every one I could get my hands on over the same weekend (and I’m still dying to find #2 and #6).

  31. sarita says:

    I am sometimes morbidly fascinated by stories where the hero is a terrible person, but lack of remorse drives me nuts. I’ll stick along for the ride with an Alphole, but then I want to see him broken….not sure what that says about me.

  32. Susan says:

    I either love or hate Stuart’s books. Boy howdy, does that woman know how to push buttons. I can’t think of one that I’m simply ambivalent about. I bought this book when it was first released but, given the size of my TBR pile, I’ve never gotten around to reading it. And despite your review, there’s no telling how I’ll react when I finally do read it.

  33. Lora says:

    I will say I love me a Stuart historical but I can’t handle the contemporaries. To me they are intolerably dark (like the one where the guy is on trial for killing his wife this girl gets involved with him and he is just EW EW EW) which is why to each her own. I like her historical heroines and, frankly, I thought Lucien in Breathless sounded exactly like the guy who played Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter so that’s how I pictured him. That may have helped 🙂

  34. pamelia says:

    I’m with Jules and Maryy — I love this one. I really like the juxtaposition of all his overt evil Snidely Whiplash mustache twirling with the subtext of him utterly falling for her. I consider this a kind of OTT gothic comic book story — utterly unrealistic, but fun fun fun.

  35. Tamara Hogan says:

    Add me to the “love it” list. I love me some dark, twisted and edgy, the dwedgier (?) the better. One of the many things I adore about Stuart’s writing is the utter WTF glee she seems to take crafting morally ambiguous – some might say downright psychopathic – characters. The ability to suspend moral judgment, at least temporarily, is one of a writer’s most important tools. Stuart has it in spades.

  36. Jez Morrow says:

    I loathe rape and degradation fantasies, but some folks like ‘em, so read and let read.

  37. Cordy says:

    (This comment turned into a manifesto about why I like Anne Stuart and am having bad luck reading historicals. Sorry, guys.)

    I am a secret Anne Stuart fan. The contemporaries I’ve tried don’t do it for me, and the historicals, particularly the Georgians, are sort of great-but-interchangeable. SHE’S poor but honest! HE’S a sexual deviant without a heart! They are so similar that I can’t necessarily remember which is which, but… I love them. I totally get the thing about the rape in this, but, bizarrely, I’m not sure it would dissuade me from reading this.

    Her heroes are often horrible people, but I’m finding that I’d rather have a hero who is explicitly horrible and manipulative, and known to the heroine as such, rather than the horrible and manipulative heroes who just… wander around, being horrible and manipulative but never getting labeled as such in so many other historical romances. You know what I mean? The heroes who are basically meatheads, dumb as a bag of rocks, but who “forbid” the heroine to do things, or take over her life and tell her what to wear or what have you, and the heroine inexplicably goes along with it. In Anne Stuart books, I generally at least have a sense of the hero being intelligent (albeit creepy and untrustworthy*) and having serious willpower, so that I understand why the heroine caves.

    *I am going through ANGRY FEELS about all the super dumb historical romances I have tried to read recently. SO many of them I have tried recently feature a hero who is claimed by the book to be trustworthy, even though he so clearly is not. It drives me nuts and gives me anxiety, because I can’t handle that the heroine voluntarily puts her fate in the hands of the Regency Dullard.

    I am trying to finish the Mary Balogh book “Only Enchanting”, which I sort of hate. The hero (who is not a meathead, exactly) and the heroine have both lied to each other by some pretty serious omissions when they enter into marriage, but their feelings about those lies of omission vanish almost instantly, and everyone is like “Welp, time to make something wonderful of this spur of the moment marriage we entered into” – also their sex life is that classic Balogh flavor of INCREDIBLY, INSTANTLY amazing and will last forever being incredible and instantly amazing. And I just find it so dull. I just don’t care.

    One thing I appreciate about Anne Stuart’s historicals is that the heroines are often very sexually drawn to the hero, but also afraid of that longing, afraid of sex in general a bit. That seems much more likely for the period to me, if you know what I mean, that sex seemed (to women in particular) like a powerful and potentially dangerous force. I certainly find it more interesting, as a vehicle for keeping the hero and heroine emotionally separate, than the parade of Huge Misunderstandings that tend to populate many historical romances.

  38. SB Sarah says:

    @Cordy:

    No shame here- if you love Stuart historicals, go on with your bad self.

    However, I must say, “Regency Dullard” is a TERRIFIC term, and I understand just what you mean.

  39. Psychbucket says:

    That sounds vile to me.

  40. kitkat9000 says:

    Ok, at this point no one’s going to read this but who cares? I actually got this series from my library based on this review. Liked the first book even though the plot was thin and the actual bad guy obvious from the start. Read Breathless and, I must say, it was even more ridiculous than the review states. That the zero’s actions are based on his sister’s suicide would make sense…if she hadn’t been crazy. But she was. And there was more than sufficient reason to believe it due to her bloodline- which he’s only too aware of. To me this book had no redeeming qualities because nothing, no secondary plots or characters, could make up for the insufferable idiocy of the zero. This is one of the few times I regret reading against a review; however, in my defense, I’d never before read a book quite like this and wanted to see for myself just how bad it was.

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