CW/TW: Sexual assault
I’ve been a romantic suspense/mystery/thriller mood lately (Ed. note: “always”) so I was excited to read Kat Martin’s latest rom sus about a woman searching for her missing brother. At first, The Conspiracy worked okay for me; the hero was a little bit boner-led, but the action and the plot made up for that flaw.
Then I got a graphic sexual assault scene that was totally unnecessary and I just noped on out.
The book opens with Harper Winston approaching Chase Garrett, the owner of Maximum Security, about helping her find her missing brother. Michael Winston went sailing in the Caribbean on vacation, but made sure to contact his sister every few days to let her know he was okay. Then his communications stopped, and Harper can’t reach him at all.
Chase and Michael have a past. They were once good friends until Michael developed a substance abuse problem, in part due to his father’s constant verbal abuse. Chase tried to get Michael help, Michael refused, and Chase cut ties. Chase also hates Harper and Michael’s wealthy, powerful father. He knows how he abused Michael, and he also knows that not all of Knox Winston’s money was earned legally.
Chase agrees to help Harper, and their search for Michael leads them from the Caribbean to Venezuela to Colombia. It turns out that Michael and the woman he was with at the time, Pia, were kidnapped by “rebels.” All of this was staged, though. Michael is really being held at the behest of a former business partner of Knox’s, someone he screwed over.
So we get some action adventure time where Harper and Chase trek through the jungle and search for the remote location where Michael and Pia are being held. They have some serious pants feelings for each other despite being
- in the jungle, sweaty and bug bitten and exhausted
- in near constant danger
- surrounded by other tough dudes who probably smell bad.
Danger boners. Gotta love them.
I wasn’t crazy about Chase from the get-go. His action guy persona exhibits a lot of toxic masculinity that reminded me of Old Skool heroes. He’s a love-em and leave-em tough guy, and I like my heroes with more emotionally fluency than that.
Here’s an example of him being gross. He introduces Harper to a man he’s hired to help them:
Dawson’s gaze swung to Harper, slid over her body, taking in her taller than average height and slender build, the blonde hair she’d pulled into a ponytail. Since Harper was a beautiful woman any man with a dick would notice, Chase didn’t take offense–as long as Dawson kept his distance.
Cool. So rather than, say, calling Dawson out on ogling his client, Chase isn’t “offended” and thinks, “Well, she’s pretty and he’s got a penis so of course he’s gonna ogle.”
So I’m already doing a lot of lip-curling where Chase is involved. Then we get the sexual assault scene.
Michael and Pia are being held prisoner, when one of their captors orders them to have sex in front of him while he masturbates. He’s armed and they aren’t, and he makes it clear that if they don’t comply he’ll kill them.
We get the entire scene from Michael’s point of view, not Pia’s. She’s clearly horrified and she’s crying, and they do have sex in front of this guy. The whole thing is awful, and it didn’t need to be there. The only purpose to this scene was the make the bad guy more bad, and we didn’t need that.
Sarah and I were discussing rape in books and specifically why I wasn’t upset about the rape scene in another book I read and reviewed recently. In that case the plot hinged on the rape occurring. If it had been removed from the book, there would be no book. It served a purpose essential to that plot. It wasn’t intended to make a villain more villainous, or provide angst for the heroine, or to titillate.
If you removed this scene from The Conspiracy, nothing changes. The villain is still bad because he kidnapped people. He’s willing to kill them. There’s still plenty of conflict and angst. Nothing would be affected.
I also thought it was odd that the scene was given to me from Michael’s point of view and not Pia’s. I agree that Michael is as much a victim in this as Pia is, but removing her voice felt like I was being distanced from her.
Despite all of this, I forged on a little longer. Then I got to the scene that really, really, REALLY made me mad.
Pia and Michael have been rescued and are recovering.
Michael calls Pia:
“I just…I called to see how you’re doing. I’ve missed you.”
A pause. “I’ve missed you too, Michael.”
Hope swelled. “I’ve thought of you every day. Dreamed of you at night. I want to see you, honey. I’ll come to Miami. Just tell me it’s okay.”
Silence descended.
“Pia…?”
“I’m sorry Michael. I’m just not ready. I keep having flashbacks. What happened…I can’t seem to get past it. All the fighting, the men dying…other things. I’m seeing someone.”
His chest clamped down. “A man?”
He finally heard a smile in her voice. “No, silly. A psychologist. She’s helping me. She says I’ll be fine. I just need some time to work things out.”
Are you fucking kidding me right now? Pia was kidnapped because of him, sexually assaulted, and is telling him she has PTSD and his response is, “you’re seeing another dude?” [sad boner wilt]. His feelings are the focus, and not hers.
I just…
I threw the book on floor, walked away from it, and raged a little bit. DNF time for me.
So to summarize: The Conspiracy has a gross sexist hero, an unnecessary sexual assault, and then treats that assault with pretty much no sensitivity. The impact on Michael is prioritized over the impact on Pia.
Fuck all of that.
I’m out.
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I can just imagine the reviews minimizing the rape and the comments on reviews that are critical of the rape — perhaps because I read a bunch of them for that cat-man alien book that was either on sale or cover snarked recently. “Rape is nbd” is quite a hill to die on, in print, in public.
Thanks for the heads-up, Elyse.
I just finished Jordanna Max Brodsky’s The Wolf in the Whale which featutes a rape scene and one character (whom the audience is supposed to sympathise with) who has committed rape in the past. While the rest of the story was fantastic, I can’t stop thinking about the problematic character and whether I should be OK with how he was handled. Would be great if SBTB could review the book and start a discussion on it. This forum has taught me a lot about feminism and women’s rights and would love your insights!
JoS: I hear you 1000%. I I don’t want to begin a discussion of one book in the comments to another, but if you’re bothered by the expectation to sympathize with a character who has done some egregious things, it’s ok to NOT be ok with how it was handled. Does that make sense?
I think my major struggle is imagining a situation where I should ever be OK with a character who has committed rape. Even if their arc is one of redemption. Yet I have been a fan of Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold and Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart. Is it OK for those characters to get happy endings? Should I rejoice in their happiness? Would I be a horrible person if I do? Am I simply romanticizing a situation in fiction that I would never be OK with in real life? And lastly, is it OK to treat a situation lightly in fiction that should never be taken lightly in real life? (Short answer to that should be no, since fiction ends up shaping mindsets that are then applied to the real world.) I have lots of questions on this, that, yes, may be better saved for a post specific to this discussion.
How come it’s usually male characters who get to be forgiven for terrible things?
This reminds me of the one and only Beatrice Small book I read years ago (the forced sex while others watch). Mind you, at the time I didn’t realise Ms. Small was queen of some crazy sauce erotic romance, so my WTF horror has abated over time, Lol! I know there are readers who enjoy old skool, so I’m not yucking
on their yum. Just saying I find nothing romantic or sexy in these types of books.
I gave up on Martin’s historicals years ago because of their rapey nature that centered feelings on the heroine. I see their contemps aren’t any better.
@Michelle: Because for white males, that’s how it works in real life. Some writers (including female writers) appear to have internalized that dynamic. Remember, somehow a man who bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women was elected President of the United States…and not all of the votes that elected him were cast by men!
/Dismounting soapbox now!
Now for my non-political comment:
[CW: rape, assault, non-consent] A few months ago, I read HEARTBREAK WARFARE, a beautifully-written, absolutely-gutting book where both the hero and heroine (army soldiers) are taken captive and tortured. The heroine is also raped by her captors in the hero’s presence, with him powerless to do anything to stop it. It was difficult to read (and could definitely be triggering), but I felt it was necessary for the arc of the hero & heroine for the violation to be described at that level. There are many books where the heroine is ALMOST raped, but the hero shows up at the final moment to SAVE her. HEARTBREAK WARFARE pulls no punches about what happens when nobody can show up—and it does not shy away from the aftermath either. In fact, the last two-thirds of the book is about what happens after the h&h are rescued (and, not incidentally, their captors killed). Rape is not used as an entertainment device, a conduit for a white knight, or a way to gauge a male character’s growth, it is the awful centerpiece of a devastating (and very good) story.
Also, anyone who reads my WHAT ARE YOU READING posts knows that I do read some “dark” romances where consent is sometimes problematic, coerced, or non-existent, but the key element in a “good dark” romance is that the lack of consent is never presented as normal or acceptable, but is always an expression of damage or deviance.
* Centered feelings on her hero’s pain ugh, sorry about that.
@Suzanne – oh yeah, Small was absolutely the queen of crazysauce erotica! When I had some unprocessed sh*t in my life, I was inordinately fond of her book “Love Slave” … holy crap, even the name is problematic… but at the time, dealing with a date rape in the context of a religious upbringing at a religious university, I found it oddly empowering. I recently came across that book at a used bookstore and picked it up. It is truly terrible, something I would DNF (throw against a wall, really) now. I was mad at the book and mad at my younger self.
Idk. Basically, I guess my comment is, having been indoctrinated to believe everything I was, was in service to my family/father/god/spouse, I am sad that this perspective still exists in some form now. Like, a woman-identified person’s body is just… I mean, I hate that a violation is downplayed in such a way. That an assault is callously used as an unnecessary plot point, and portrayed as something one can just “work out.” I can tell you right now, 20+ years later, I’m still “working it out.”
I just finished the book and read this review. I would not label this situation as a rape but definitely as forced sex, and I do agree that the book would have been just fine without it. But Michael did everything he could to mitigate the situation and protected her body and her mind as much as possible. Yes, the author could have spent some time in Pia’s head also but she didn’t gloss over her suffering aftereffects either. I don’t know if it’s my age or my long experience with reading, but I’ve seen descriptions that bothered me a whole lot more (for instance, I’m still angry with Catherine Coulter in one of her old medieval books for having a man rape a friend of the heroine in front of her to prove he’s sincere in his demands for her surrender, but most especially for making that man the hero of one of the subsequent books in the series!). We all see things differently but I wanted to add a different perspective (and I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault so I am not just speaking from total ignorance of the repercussions). Nor have I ever felt that a man was entitled to anything he wants just because his plumbing is on the outside. Quite the opposite! I am not trying to change the minds of anyone but give a different take for other readers of this review and comments.