TW: discussion of rape and sexual assault
I’ve felt like I’ve had a vitamin deficiency for the past few months, and I finally realized what I needed to correct it. I needed crazysauce. I needed banana-crackers.
Luckily, two people came to my aid to recommend something.
Ellen DeGeneres took Michelle Obama to CVS to help re-introduce her to civilian life, and they stopped by the bookshelf, and pulled Lady Pirate off the shelf. Michelle was dubious, but I said “I NEED THIS.”
Valoree (the names!) is the captain of a pirate ship, the Valor (get it?). She and her brother were the children of some peer or another, and discovered when Valoree was about 8 or so that their guardian had bled their inheritance dry. Nothing left to do but acquire a ship and a letter of marque and go a-pirating to get enough money to restore the estate. As one does.
Fast forward a few years and Val has spent most of her life pretending to be the cabin boy, and then her brother gets murdered in the course of their pirating and she takes over as captain and then the crew finds out that she’s a women and everyone is surprisingly fine with that. Then they find out that according to her father’s will, if she wants to inherit the estate, she needs to marry and be pregnant with a potential heir by the time she’s 25. At the time she’s finds this out, she’s got 9 months.
Luckily, at the same time with the same solicitor, Daniel, the Peer of Something, also needs to marry and beget an heir in order to inherit his grandmother’s many many many thousands of pounds.
The pirate crew all vote that Valoree should try to get hitched, which she says she’s uncool with, but they voted and pirate ships are a democracy (which is accurate, actually) and so they rent a house and acquire an old woman who needs an occupation to pose as Val’s aunt and the pirates all play at being servants while they all acquire invites to various soirees so Val can meet a dude to marry.
Val thinks she needs a weak dude because she’s all used to independence, and Daniel’s like, all strong and alpha and shit, so even though they a) can solve each other’s problems b) can’t keep their fucking hands off of each other, including dry-humping in the garden, and c) can’t stop thinking about each other at ALL, she rejects him several times.
Eventually the pirate crew is like “FUCK ALL OF THIS” and kidnap them both, and somewhere along the line Val threatens to have Daniel hanged (for Reasons) so that sets things back a bit, and then the book hits a point where I just can’t anymore.
Daniel doesn’t want to deal with Val because she tried to hang him, and she NEEDS to get married and get knocked up, so she has the crew go ashore and acquire a minister and has them get Daniel SO DRUNK he marries her and signs the contract without knowing what he was doing. That’s all bad enough, but she also tries to fuck him while he’s unconscious (NOPE) and when that doesn’t work, she has him brought ashore, lays him out, and waits for him to wake up so she could make his dick work and fuck him that way.
Okay, no. Yes, sure, he’s mad but ultimately into it. BUT NO. Just because it’s female on male rape does not make it okay. And she married and tried to fuck him while he was too drunk to know what was happening. NO NO NO. Nothing about that is okay, and yes, I finished the book but only out of spite.
Also we get the trope where Daniel realizes that Val is pregnant, and assumes that she’s a fucking moron and wouldn’t know what the symptoms are, and is all agonized over telling her, and she fucking lets him have it when she’s like, “You thought I was that stupid? Who the fuck do you think I am?” which was cool and all, but he spends a lot of time admiring her brilliance up until they get together and then he suddenly he starts assuming she’s an idiot. It takes basically the rest of the cast to go, “what the fuck dude, what’s wrong with you?” before he gets it.
Up until the whole rape business, I was enjoying myself. Sands was not taking things seriously and was letting the wacky flag fly with this crew of pirates who just want their captain to be happy, even in spite of herself. And as the crew and Valoree try to navigate society, wackiness ensues, including using cake batter and raspberries as makeup. Like, some of the details weren’t right, but that only detracted somewhat.
But then we get to this whole rape thing and that just killed it dead. I know this was originally published in 2001, and we were still in the transition out of the Old School rapiness. But we were transitioning out, and equating the rape with the comedy and thinking it’s funny because it’s female on male just is a NO. This made me SO MAD. This was a reissue, and there had to have been the option of reworking it. It wouldn’t have even needed a huge massive re-write.
I needed some crazysauce. I got some crazysauce to put on my banana-crackers, but MAN I could have done without the rapiness.
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I was tempted by the pretty cover + pirate chick, but matchmaking pirate crew is a level of disbelief I can’t suspend, and the rape-y part has me throwing this book on the last Nope train to Nopeville. Rape is rape and never okay, female-on-male-victim or not. That “heroine” should be made to walk the plank so the hero can go find someone who actually cares about, oh, I dunno, CONSENT.
The review might be the best part of this story. I agree with Heather S — this is the last Nope train to Nopesville for me. Even if I was willing to go with matchmaking pirates — but only if they sing — I just can’t do the rapey mcrapersons.
I read a Lynsay Sands book last year, A Perfect Wife, and I feel like she enjoys abusing her characters and trusts that the historical setting will make up for it. After reading your account of one of her works, I double down on that feeling. While a sample size of two isn’t scientific or fair, it reinforces the feeling that I’m not wrong when I pass books by simply because her name is on the cover.
I feel like romance authors are surprisingly okay(???) with like “they’re asleep, eh still going to have sex with their sleeping body” rape. I remember trying to read Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas which featured the same sort of thing, although repeated, over and over again and like, losing my goddamn mind because I was so mad. That book also confused be because 1) it seems to be a super beloved ST book, and 2) NO REVIEW mentioned that like… having sex with someone while they’re asleep is rape, because people who are asleep by definition cannot give consent.
IDK why but this seems to be an area where romance authors are not as up to speed on, uh, the definition of what rape is as I would want them to be.
My husband and I once discussed this trope with various acknowledgements of consent passing between us. That would be lovely to actually have discussed in the book. Cuddling and kissing until they wake up and give consent would be really sweet. Or it totally backfires and causes arguments that leads to said necessary discussion of consent. So much missed opportunity to blast a bad trope.
Aw I was reading the review and thinking this sounded like some wack-a-doodle fun and then damn rapiness. I’m already not a fan of the trick the guy into donating sperm trope and roofying just makes it worse. Didn’t The Duke and I come out around this same time?
So now that I don’t want to read this book how about some recs? Pirates helping ladies get dates? Susan Wiggs’s Charm School has the crew teaching the heroine, well, charm school stuff.
What one can do to a sleeping person:
1. Nothing. Let them sleep.
2. Maybe if they’ve kicked their covers off, you can cover them back up again.
3. That’s it.
What one can do to an inebriated person:
1. Help keep them safe.
Oof, that’s too bad. Lynsay Sands is one of my go-to purveyors of WTFery and crazysauce. If memory serves, “The Highlander Takes a Bride” has all the crazy without any questionable consent issues.
Aaaand, this is why I don’t read Suzanne Elizabeth Phillips. In one of the books, the heroine snoops through his crap, steals a condom from his shaving kit, and then proceeds to have sex with him while he’s unconscious.
If you want crazysauce, PLEASE PLEASE read Triple Princes by Cassandra Dee. PLEASE. I am BEGGING you to review this book. It’s spent 2 weeks floating around in the top 200 on Amazon and I cannot FOR THE LIFE of me figure out WHY. It’s the most terrible thing I ever read. PLEAAAASSSE.
I hate how women raping men is treated as no problem in romance. It really, really upsets me. The Duke and I really broke me on the Julia Quinn front, I haven’t bought one of her books new since that one. I just don’t know how I feel because otherwise she’s such a great author but rape is really a do not pass go, do not collect $200 sort of thing for me.
Mr.Miranda patted my hair once while we were supposed to be sleeping because I was moving around so much, he thought I was awake. Actually, I was moving around because I was having a nightmare about a giant spider. FTR, a hand touching your hair feels one HELL OF A LOT like a giant spider. I didn’t hit him, even accidentally, but the thrashing went up a remarkable amount. Now, both wait until the other person is talking intelligently before initiating any action. It’s respectful and an important safety precaution.
@Lizzy I’m struck by your comment because I read the Duke and I and never ONCE remembered that scene, and had it strike me as out of place. I had to google “The duke and I rape” to even get an idea of what it was. I think it’s really alarming that if you read enough romance scenes like that can just sort of slip by a reader, and I think that it says dark things about our (often accurate) claim that romance is sex-positive and empowering for readers when we can also read romance for so long that certain types of rape start to seem… normal(?)
I had a similar experience reading Julie Ann Long. In one of her books (the pirate one maybe?) the hero goes on and on about how he COULD rape the heroine but because he’s such a great guy he WON’T and I’ve never read another one of her books. Never will. I was so repulsed by that scene.
@Kay, I LOVED that series until that book (This Heart of Mine)–that was a DNF and I haven’t gone back to try again yet. I still love some of SEP’s stuff, but that one I could not stomach. Strangely I did not have as strong an objection to The Duke and I; I’m not sure I could say why not?
And @Redheadedgirl, thanks for the review–so much of the story sounds fabulous, but ugh, CONSENT!!! That does indeed kill it dead. 🙁
I read This Heart of Mine by SEP first and totally glossed over the rape. And then I read The Duke and I by JQ and the lack of consent in that one really, really bothered me. And it made me re-think This Heart of Mine. I continued to read both authors, although I’ve kind of broken up with both since because my tastes have changes.
It’s a little embarrassing to me that it took me until the second time I read male rape to object to it, but I think that actually points to how rape culture works – I’m pretty educated about rape and consent and this stuff still slips by me.
Is it terrible that I’m super concerned that Michelle Obama will read this and be your fellow traveler on the train to NOPEville… but then think that’s the only train available in Romancelandia? WHAT IF SHE DOESN’T KNOW.
I tap out as soon as the rapey stuff pops up. Can’t shake it.
i enjoyed this review immensely. i also love michelle “shelley” obama in the clip you included. fml i’m so sad that the obamas are no longer in the white house… even if you don’t agree with all of the obama’s administrations (i certainly don’t about certain issues), they were just… so classy.
sigh 🙁
“Nothing left to do but acquire a ship and a letter of marque and go a-pirating to get enough money to restore the estate. As one does.”
FOR CRYING OUT–
THAT’S PRIVATEERING!!!
If you get yourself a ship and a letter of marque, that means the government has hired you to raid merchant ships of countries that your country is at war with. You have a certain list of rules to follow (which you may or may not, depending on how honorable you are and how willing the people in authority are to look the other way), you leave all other ships alone, you have to hand over a certain amount of the plunder to the government, and your crew is not a democracy. That’s privateering. Now, plenty of pirates started out as privateers and then decided, “Y’know what? I’m tired of this ‘Don’t rob anybody we’re not at war with and hand over half your loot’ nonsense, I’m gonna turn pirate and rob everybody equally and keep it all for myself and make my own rules”, but I’ve seen way too many people confuse piracy with privateering and vice versa, so I can’t be certain that that ever happens in this book, and the fact that I cannot MAKES ME ANGRY, THANK YOU. /end budding pirate nerd rant
So yes, that already had me a little upset, and then I was snorting at the general stupidity of the rest of the plot…and then somewhere around “crew outvotes their captain and says, ‘No, ma’am, yer gettin’ hitched'” I went from, “Well, aren’t you a charming bunch of berks” to “Wait…is this their way of saying nicely that they don’t want a lady as captain, thank you kindly all the same ma’am?” And then you got to the bit about them posing as servants and I was starting to go, “OK, that’s just stupid enough that it loops around and becomes hilarious, and this could actually work, as long as no one involved takes it too seriously…” when I remembered that this was graded F and I said, “Aw nuts, something ruins it, doesn’t it?”
And sure enough it did.
The whole consent thing ruined it.
Just…just…
https://media.giphy.com/media/N4K0mbaJtwLgQ/giphy.gif
Why.
Why.
WHY.
It could have been a stupid-but-charming pirate comedy, and instead we got…creepy to the nth degree. Why would anybody think that was okay? In any time period?!