You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO request is from Megan, who is trying to help her friend track down this romance. Content warning for the description below:
This is a secondhand HaBO. My best friend was describing the first romance she ever read (which she found at her mormon Bishop’s house when she was a teenager!), and she can’t remember the title. She read it circa 2007 but has no idea when it was published.
Here’s what she remembers:
- It’s an historical romance.
- Heroine’s male cousin is an antagonist
- Hero was rich, maybe?
- Heroine has a masturbation scene (performed while she’s waiting for the hero to come to bed with her).
- TW:rape – The h/h have slept together a few times already when the hero rapes the heroine (she says she’s not interested; he goes ahead anyway). This detail makes me think we’re looking for Old School Romance.
- After the rape (which isn’t treated as such), the hero realizes he did a bad and apologizes to one of her breasts. The heroine makes him apologize to the other breast too.
- During oral sex, the hero inserts flavored ice cubes into the heroine’s vagina.
- he cousin, who is a total creeper, tries to break the couple up by taunting the hero with the fact that he’s seen the heroine naked. He describes a birthmark that’s on her leg, but the hero knows the cousin is lying because he says the birthmark is on the wrong leg.
Well…that is something.
Shout out to the Mormon Bishop’s wife for being (most likely) a totally cool lady, gettin’ her a romance on. 😉
The apologies to cleavage and flavored ice cubes sound familiar, but I’m drawing a blank.
I don’t think I’ve read this one, but the birthmark makes me think it’s old school. Back when everyone had purple eyes and worried that their boobs were just too big oh no how unattractive, resolution often came down to a birthmark.
And if the hero is the rapist? I’m guessing 80s.
I have no idea what book this is but it sounds completely amazing! I will be following this thread closely in case someone identifies all this crazysauce! Definitely sounds Old Skool if there’s a dubious consent scene. . .
It sounds like the Stargazer by Michelle Jaffe
It sounds like crazy sauce but I want to know it, and maybe read it!
So … since how long ago have flavored ice cubes been a thing? That does not strike me as something that belongs in a historical. But hey, always willing to be educated.
Kelsey above said if first – it definitely is The Stargazer by Michelle Jaffe.
To clarify a couple of points, he doesn’t actually rape her but he comes about as close as you can get. He’s trying to scare her or convince her he’s a bad man (he convinced me) but she tells him no matter what he does he won’t pollute her mind against him. (gag)
It’s not actually ice cubes he uses it’s the more historically accurate “flavored ices” like shaved ice. This is in response to her using icy wine on him in a similar manner as I recall.
It’s set in Renaissance Venice as I recall but the hero is English by birth.
Oh and he’s embarrassed about you know, ripping her clothes off, holding her down and trying to rape her so he mumbles his apology while on top of her with his face in her chest which prompts her to tell him to “apologize to the other one”. He didn’t actually have a habit of talking to her bosom apart from that although I can see why it would have been memorable.
It was published in hardcover in 1999 which is when I got mine. I don’t know what happened to Jaffe. She had a couple of hardcovers published (kind of out of the blue I thought at the time as it was only very big league prolific authors like Krentz, Lindsey etc who were making the jump to hardcover back then) then I don’t remember hearing of her again.
https://www.amazon.com/Stargazer-Arboretti-Family-Saga-Book-ebook/dp/B00LC8QZNU/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513122408&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=Stargazer+by+Michelle+Jaffe found it on amazon for only 99 cents!
Adding my confirmation! I discovered her because as a young teen I loved her YA books (she doesn’t have too many), and then I read her adult ones (the Arboretti series) when I was like…15 or 16? And really loved them then but haven’t enjoyed them as much in reread. Still enjoyable though
Is this the same Jaffe who wrote Bad Kitty? Because that book was hilarious. Improbable but hilarious. Also read the sequel Kitty Kitty. Loved that Jas imagines moments in her life with a voice-over narration by Peter Thomas of Forensic Files fame.
Texted my friend, and she confirmed that Stargazer is the book we’ve been looking for. You all are astounding!
Thanks to the Bitchery for solving this mystery.
Ice cube in vagina: Memorable conversation with a performance artist who advised to never ever put an ice dildo in your vagina, particularly on stage. Like licking a frozen telephone pole. I’m thinking it didn’t have the desired meaning.