B
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Fairy Tale, Retelling, Small Town
Archetype: Character with a Disability
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Erica. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Long Contemporary category.
The summary:
In this modern-retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” Savannah Carmichael, betrayed by an unreliable source, returns to her hometown of Danvers, Virginia with her once-promising journalism career in ruins. Given the opportunity to get back in the game by writing a patriotic human interest piece, Savannah turns her attention to the town hermit, Asher Lee, a wounded veteran who returned to Danvers eight years ago, and hasn’t been seen since.
After an IED explosion in Afghanistan took Asher’s hand and disfigured half of his face, he’s lived a quiet life on the outskirts of Danvers where the locals respect his privacy…that is, until Savannah Carmichael comes calling in a borrowed sundress with a plate of homemade brownies. When Asher agrees to be interviewed by Savannah, he starts feeling things for the beautiful reporter that he hasn’t felt in years.
Misfits in small-town Danvers, Savannah and Asher create a bond right away, touching each other’s hearts in ways neither thought possible. When a terrible mistake threatens to drive them apart, they’ll have to decide if the love they found in one another’s arms is strong enough to fight for their hard-won happily ever after.
Here is Erica's review:
Once upon a time, I was on Twitter and I was bubbly and slightly interesting and talked to all sorts of fantastic people. During that awesome time of Twitter joy, Katy Regnery and I bonded over the fact that the Toby Stephens of Jane Eyre is the BEST Jane Eyre movie version EVER. So, I was planning to really love her book, because clearly she has fantastic taste.
Have I established firmly enough the fact that I did not read book descriptions before picking titles to review? Because except for one book (Some Boys), I did not read any book descriptions. So, when I picked The Vixen and the Vet, I was under the impression that I was going to get a grumpy, taciturn, curmudgeon-y veterinarian, which is my personal catnip.
So, when I started the book, I was disappointed to find that the vet in question was, in fact, not a veterinarian, but a reclusive, severely damaged and disfigured war veteran. And I got turned off. Don’t get me wrong, as a wife of a combat veteran, I am super glad that people are talking about the difficulties for veterans, that PTSD is a thing that is acknowledged and discussed. But, in Romancelandia, it has become too commonplace, and it is sometimes treated really badly. Like, the last one I read, the heroine gave the hero a blowjob every time he had a flashback, and that healed him? There’s this assumption that the magical glittery hoo-ha of the heroine will magically heal all wounds and trauma and it pisses me off.
So I stalled. But then I realized that I was being ridiculous because I hadn’t even read the book yet, and already I was judging it because I was annoyed with other books. That’s not fair. So, I got back to reading.
I was all over the damn place with this book. I cried. I ranted. I wrote notes on this book while half-asleep and they are hilarious to read. I giggled. I sighed with yummy book happiness. And I cried some more. It’s a pretty obvious Beauty and the Beast retelling, one that references that it’s a Beauty and the Beast retelling several times. Asher’s housekeeper/caregiver is named Miss Potts, you guys. Miss Potts. And I’d rather not talk about how long it took me to figure that reference out and find it hilarious. There’s a line repeated a couple of times: Beauty and the Beast with The Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background. But in all honesty, it’s Beauty and the Beast and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days – only really good.
There’s so much good. There’s all the talking. There’s the fact that Asher is not only a romance fan, but a CRUSIE FAN. Immediate crush for that, dude. His story is touching and sad and real in a way that breaks my heart. Savannah has some really great moments of depth and understanding and she comforts him in a way that made me get all weepy as I cheered for Savannah and Asher: the actual couple. Its gets heavy for a minute – trigger warning, there is an attempted sexual assault, and rape culture bullshit where no one really believes her – but when it’s resolved, it’s resolved in a way that is lovely and satisfying and final. And while I may be upset that that rat bastard isn’t rotting in a jail cell, I’m pretty happy with how it eventually ended up. (Oh my god, I want to talk about it so much. SO MUCH. Let’s just say, there are lot of capital letters and cheering and “Damn right, you jackass, that’s what you get!” in my review notes.) Savannah’s mom is the best. Miss Potts is even better.
This IS a good book, but there are some weird little problems here and there. The pacing in the beginning is really off. Like, they’re falling for each other and admitting it REALLY early. And while I love, love, love, LOOOOOOVE, LURRRRVE the fact that there is so much Asher and Savannah talking and bonding and communicating, it makes the epic clusterfuck of bad decisions that happens in the book painful. The Big Misunderstanding moment (which isn’t really from a Big Misunderstanding but from really bad decisions and an inability to listen when one’s feelings are hurt) is SO GODDAMN ANNOYING. Seriously, from like 30% on, I was yelling at her for being a dumb ass.
Then there’s the fact that Savannah was fired from her last job because she fell for her source, then published his version of events and was completely discredited because he was a lying asshole. The fact that she is falling for her subject now is frustrating beyond belief. Like, I get it, the lying asshole mistake had to happen so she could get to Asher, but I want to yell at her to realize her goddamn mistakes and stop being dumb. But that would mean no romance, but still…
The lack of swearing. Okay, like I said in my Jill Shalvis review, it’s not like I expect everyone to cuss like a sailor the way I do. I understand that there are adults out there who do not swear, and that’s cool, you do you. BUT. If you are not going to swear, then just don’t swear. These damned not-dirty almost-swears are the dumbest things ever and they just irritate me. “Golddarned.” GOLDDARNED. You are a goddamned grown ass woman, say what you want to say. And then there’s this attitude of – I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like people are disapproving of the whole sex before marriage thing? Savannah stays over at Asher’s house a few times, and a lot of people are upset about it and I was just like, are we in the same century, here? It’s just weird and it kinda hurts my head.
There are some weird mistakes – like someone wasn’t proofreading close enough and some odd punctuation mistakes are around sometimes and it kinda threw me out of the story. Like, how can he wear sunglasses if he doesn’t have two ears? I mean, I’m sure there’s a way, but it wasn’t mentioned and I was concerned enough about it to totally put down the book and try to research it. But these kind of errors didn’t happen often enough to be seriously egregious.
I have problems with the whole “I can’t live without you” way of declaring love, especially when it wasn’t true. They both became better versions of themselves and were building new lives without the other one – the lives weren’t as good, but they were complete people. The idea that you’re not complete without a partner is problematic and frustrated the hell out of me.
But. BUT. I really did enjoy the hell out of this book. I really did. I loved Asher. I liked Savannah, I felt like she and I would be buddies. I was rooting for them together and I fully believe in this happily-ever-after (*cough* even though it happens too quickly *cough*), and I’m sure out there in this fictional world, they are together and doing good things. This was not a magic hoo-ha cures your PTSD story, and for that I am grateful. It may have been a magic hoo-ha inspires you to try to better yourself and work on your PTSD issues yourself, but that is a much better story. My grade? B+ for characters and for so much of what’s happening. B- for the goddamned obvious as hell Big Misunderstanding moment glaring at me throughout the whole book. So, a solid B average.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to watch Boardwalk Empire, because I have a Richard Harrow to fall in love with.
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well.
Thanks!
Excellent review! Rita reader challenge is one of my favorite Smart Bitches features, especially in these categories where I’ve read half the titles and not the other half.
By the way, I added a second sheet to the sign-up on google docs to track the grades as they came in (I was doing it for myself, because I kept missing what got what score, so I added it there.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12nmu3GLGqjgW6RK1C1EWbYbg3SVY6O7njcS0OSYGOQE/edit#gid=1613280299
I love your reviews and in your one for the Jill Shalvis’ one picked up on a lot of what makes it harder for me to get into contemporaries, how everyone is built and beautiful. This one sounds like it could be interesting, I’m a big fan of wounded warrior stories, but mainly read histories.
Mary Balogh’s Survivor’s Club has no magic anything, various PTSD stuff happens and it doesn’t just get fixed, it gets better.
As always, fantastic review!!
Now I just need to decide if the yummy factors beat out the annoying factors.
Thank you guys! I come out sounding a little harsher than I meant to, I think, because I really did ADORE so much of this book.
And I am definitely going to look into the Mary Balogh series. I could use some storis that don’t presume to “fix” PTSD. That sounds pretty excellent.
I’m also tired of the “damaged warrior” trope. I appreciate that it’s good that we recognise mental as well as physical trauma but it seems as if every single book with a Forces hero has them suffering from some sort of PTSD that is easily fixed by the heroine.
I don’t buy it, especially as I’m married to a soldier.
I’d love to see a novel where the hero or heroine has seen combat and has come to terms with that without significant mental anguish – just like the majority of Forces personnel do.
I’m not diminishing PTSD – it exists and is real and devastating – but PTSD in Romancelandia seems to highlight it (every soldier is damaged by war) and trivialise it (all they need is luuuuurve) at the same time.
When that’s coupled with unnrealistic portrayals of Service life, I find myself flinging a book away pretty quickly.
I have been wondering about the preponderance of soldiers/veterans in romancelandia in recent years. I have been assuming that this has been about the effect of the wars in iraq/afghanistan on the American psyche, and the omnipresence of military/veterans in US society. (or maybe they arn’t? That’s part of my question I suppose)
In Australia we have tremendous regard and respect for veterans, but the military is not present in mainstream society. While we have a defense establishment, we do not have a military industrial complex the way the US does. We always have a number military operations (ie peace keeping and combat operations) going on however. We have about 20 – 30 000 military personnel active in a population of 23 million. Only a few thousand, at the most, are on operations at any given time.
I can’t name off the top of my head, an Australian set romance with a soldier/veteran in it.That isn’t to say there aren’t any of course. I have read lots and lots of US-set books with soldiers/veterans.
Would this be right? (I am not American) Or has it been a Thing like BDSM and billionaires?
I don’t mind the wounded warrior, and I don’t mind the heroine helping the wounded warrior. I do mind that sexytimes with her is somehow supposed to heal him, which is just not cool. Or accurate. And while every combat veteran I know seems to have some level of trauma, very few of them actually discuss it or have “episodes” that seem to happen to every vet in Romancelandia. I don’t know if this is a function of the stigma against mental illness, or more of the whole machismo, I’m stronger than anything out there mentality of the military. (And I say that with a lot of love and respect. I’m a military brat and wife, so I get it.)
And while it may be a Thing, like BDSM and billionaires, I think it’s also a pretty good indication of how a lot of the military is now. I live in a military town and about 75% of my husband’s friends have been deployed at least once. A few of them have been several times. Now, my numbers are probably skewed just of my environment, and other people in the US might have no knowledge of what the tone of the military is after two wars for over a decade. But military heroes have always been important to Romancelandia, I think, because of the whole badass manly vibe, and I think, these days, it would be to some extent irresponsible to not address the problems that so many of them face when coming home. And actually, this book does a fantastic job with that with the town that doesn’t really give a crap for its hometown hero. But I think it’s also irresponsible to talk about PTSD the way it has been talked about — it’s a Thing, like you described it. It’s a trend. And it’s another thing to be solved and fixed by the heroine’s vagina. And I have a legit problem with that.
This got long. And I have no idea if I am making any sense or not.
I am totally with you on the swearing. Cutesy swearing by romance heroines is one of my major pet peeves. Especially the ones who seem to have a signature cutesy word that they use constantly. It comes off to me as annoying and immature, and not at all endearing as I suspect the authors are aiming for.
I read the title of this review without looking at the cover. I thought it was about a veterinarian and female fox shifter. 🙂
@LB, I suspect that cutsey swearing probably derives from some misguided notion that “ladies don’t swear” or some bullshit like that. 😉
@susan, Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! That would be the BEST story. Somebody needs to go write that!
Is the non-swearing thing from the tradition in harlequins that swearing was not allowed? I recall Suzanne Brockmann commenting about writing men in the military for harlequin with very tidy vocuabularies.
I hate that “ladies don’t swear” rubbish. Anyone who says that hasn’t been to fucking boarding school.
I want to read the fox shifter book.
I”ve been reading for a few years in the news that the US military has been overstretched by having so many conflicts going on, and that has exerted a toll on the personnel with repeated tours.
That is an excellent point that I hadn’t considered. Although, I would think that someone would be excited to be out of that confinement and just totally freak out and be dropping bombs everywhere, but that’s probably just me. 😉
When you hear/read about Vietnam, there were people who joined the National Guard, so that they wouldn’t be deployable. But lately, it seems like the National Guard are the first ones sent over. It’s crazy and I don’t know why it shifted, or even if it really did change as much as it seems to have done (my perspective may be skewed), but being overstretched does seem to be true. I think my husband’s boss has been deployed like 5 times? I can’t even imagine that shit.
I can understand that a military hero is a bit of a stereotype in romance (and, inded, mainstream) fiction. After all the “man in uniform” – and women’s reaction to him – is prevalent in all sorts of media.
Perhaps the current glut of them in romance is a reaction to conflicts since 9/11, I don’t really know.
My perspective is skewed however as I’m a Scot married to an English officer, so the American experience is alien to me. Saying that, my husband was comissioned sixteen years ago and has been deployed four times since then and that’s a comparatively small number of deployments to his peer group.
While we have lost friends and are aware of people who have suffered mental and physical trauma, most of my husband’s colleagues seem to be fine and coping well with life. Certainly the kind of dramatic “episodes” that occur on the page do not seem to be happening to thosewho have suffered and sex is most definitely not a cure! Sadly, more than a few of our circle have gone through divorce and relationship breakdown and military life has certainly played apart in that.
I asked my husband fairly recently if he felt any doubts or qualms over anything he’d seen or done on tour and he told me that he didn’t, that he felt “at peace” with his actions and that while he’d seen unpleasant things and that coming home was always an “adjustment”, he had no mental hangovers from his combat service.
He appears to be the norm amongst our circle.
And while every combat veteran I know seems to have some level of trauma, very few of them actually discuss it or have “episodes” that seem to happen to every vet in Romancelandia. I don’t know if this is a function of the stigma against mental illness, or more of the whole machismo, I’m stronger than anything out there mentality of the military. (And I say that with a lot of love and respect. I’m a military brat and wife, so I get it.)
My experience is the opposite in that few of our friends and colleagues seem to have trauma. However your point about not discussing it is valid in the UK as well – partially through stigma and partially through the machismo and stiff-upper-lip attitude of the miltary.
Come to think of it, I’ve never read a modern m/f romance with a British military hero. Billions and billions of historicals with military heroes of course.
All the army or ex-army people I know tend to be very quiet about their operational experience, unless they are hanging out with other service people and/or are getting drunk. I had a job where part of the deal was drinking with them after hours.
Sometimes for work I would have to ask them specific details of their operations, and some of them would get quite agitated. I never asked them about killing people, more things like how many times on a patrol day they would take their backpack on and off. Or how a hot drop worked. (in Vietnam if a helicopter was transporting soldiers into a fire zone, it would keep itself about a metre or so off the ground and the soldiers would jump off)
Oh yeah, the few times I have ever heard the vets I know talking about their experiences was under the influence of alcohol. It’s just that there have been a lot of wet nights over the years. Sometimes they tell funny stories. Sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they get emotional, but those tend to be pretty extreme circumstances. It’s definitely not like how I’ve seen it presented in romance novels.
I think a modern British military romance would be pretty interesting. I would be really intrigued to see the different perspective.
I don’t think I’ve read a contemporary romance with a British military hero or heroine either. Mind you, the vast majority of big-name romance writers are America (as far as I can see) so their experience and research is going to tend towards the familiar. The British military is organised on different lines and has a lingo and tradition that’s separate and distinct to the US.
I was at a ball lest weekend where there were some US officers and their wives attending and the difference in dress and mess culture was quite apparent (no snobbery or disparagement, just that the American way of doing things was obviously different) so I imagine it would be difficult to research the nuances of British military life if you didn’t know anyone on the inside.
There are loads of historical military heroes but the nuances are less important as we look back from a distance – especially when those historical heroes appear to exhibit very modern behaviours!
We do get “war stories” when together in a group but they tend to be of the self-deprecating or humourous variety. The stories my husband and his colleagues will tell amongst a military group are very different from those they will tell when civvies are present.
I think a modern British military romance would be pretty interesting. I would be really intrigued to see the different perspective
I’d love to read one – there could be a whole chapter around the different ways you can pass the port at dinner. Seriously, each Mess has a different way to pass and pour the port and it’s an expensive minefield of potential Mess fines if you get it wrong!
My husband was deployed twice, as a Guardsman, and while he suffered some PTSD, it’s not the way I’ve ever seen it portrayed in romance. Sometimes he gets depressed, sometimes he gets angry, sometimes he has an anxiety attack. Sex is the last thing he wants at that moment.
But you know, 90% of the time, he’s just an average guy.
This shitty trend needs to go away.
I also REALLY hate the shaming about sex. It’s a ROMANCE novel, sex comes with the territory. Go read an inspirational or something if you’re going to complain that a 21st century couple might screw.
I think I read an m/m romance sometime in the last year with a UK combat vet. Overall I feel like I found the book annoying but I don’t think the portrayal of the vet was the problematic part. One of the characters lived in a lighthouse and had a dog, and maybe the same character was a doctor?
Reading the discussion, I realize that cutsie non-swearing is a total showstopper for me–good to know it’s a thing for other people, too!
Ah, it was Driftwood by Harper Fox, and both men are veterans. I gave it two stars on Goodreads–I think mostly for the over the top drama/melodrama at the end. But anyway, a contemporary with UK veterans.
Yeah, I gave never seen someone with PTSD act like a character with PTSD in a romance. It is really weird, the disparity between the two. How did this trend even start? But, I said somewhere, I don’t mind the story being that the heroine helps him get better or whatever the case may be. I do mind that it is through the power of her sex skills that he is healed and whole and perfect now. That shit has got to stop.
You know, the shaming aspect was a tiny part, and it was of an older generation, and this book is really Southern and glories in its Southern-ness. And that’s fine, but it does get a little shame-y when it comes to her staying the night with him. And it is just so bizarre.
And clearly now we need someone to write the female fox shifter and veterinarian story and a modern British romance story. THESE THINGS MUST HAPPEN!
I think that the PTSD trope is interesting. I’m glad it’s being treated sympathetically instead of all those movies and TV shows where the Vietnam Vet freaked out and killed everyone. I don’t know if the reality of returning soldiers is at all encapsulated in the romance genre, but it *might* be a step in the right direction.
Damn it. I need to stop typing on my phone. I meant modern British military romance. But we have one now, so that’s pretty cool!
My husband was deployed twice, as a Guardsman, and while he suffered some PTSD, it’s not the way I’ve ever seen it portrayed in romance. Sometimes he gets depressed, sometimes he gets angry, sometimes he has an anxiety attack. Sex is the last thing he wants at that moment.
But you know, 90% of the time, he’s just an average guy.
This shitty trend needs to go away.
I think this the point that Erica and I were making: that PTSD does not manifest itself in the way it’s often portrayed on the page and that relationships (and sex) suffer as a result. Military service and the men and women involved is not as clearcut as the media make it appear.
PTSD seems to be used as a way of “weakening” the hero so that he can be “saved” by the heroine without injuring his masculinity. After all, PTSD is a weakness forced on the hero by all the brave things he’s done.
I have real problems with the idea of “heroism” in the media – the kind of “Our Boys” patriotism displayed in the UK tabloids and even displayed by some charities (Help for Heroes being one – being injured does not automatically make you a hero and devalues the word – hero is not a synonym for soldier/sailor/airman).
I also think that some romance writing uses the idea of a military hero as a way of escaping true character development. After all, if the reader automatically assigns the hero certain characteristics (bravery, stoicism, leadership, physicality etc) by virtue of being told by the author that he is a soldier, then it saves the author from showing us those characteristics.
While it is true that the military selection process does look for certain types of people, there are as many different kinds of soldier as there are serving personnel.
Lazy plotting IMHO – although I am sure there are authors who put more nuances and realism into it but I think it all is a bit too close to home for me to be charitable about the issue.
I hadn’t read that romance but m/m is not my bag so it wouldn’t have come on my radar.
Would love to read a mainstream British military romance, complete with Mess politics, crap housing, weird curtains, strange drinking rituals and death-by-competitive-dinner-party as well as op tours, mucky exercises in Wales and showers that don’t work.
You know Jcscott, over my reading decades I have read quite a few books about or set in the British army, from the male point of view. I’ve never before heard anything about it from the wife’s point of view. Except for those set in WWII, which is a bit different.
Joanna Trollope wrote a book based on the current conflicts a few years ago – The Soldier’s Wife – which was a bestseller. I didn’t like it as the wives featured were very two-dimensional although the men were a bit better fleshed-out. Lots of my civvie friends rated it and seemed to think my life must have resembled the book. Ha! As if!
There’s also a series of books by Amanda Prowse that focus on the military but they’re really badly-written (started off as self-published and it shows) but some of the detail is a bit more accurate as the author is married to a sergeant (or an ex-sargeant).
@Phyllis Laatsch, I do think that discussing PTSD and the problems that veterans face coming back home is a good thing. I absolutely think that acknowledging that this stuff is happening to so many men and women is a good thing. But the standards of what PTSD is is getting really distorted in romance novels, and I think that that is dangerous. Because if your spouse comes home and, like Jamie said, 90% of the time, he’s just a normal guy, then you might be more inclined to say that he’s okay, when maybe he’s not really all that okay. Maybe you think because he’s not having flashbacks and night terrors every night, that he doesn’t have anything wrong with him — or if he does have flashbacks and night terrors, you might think that you jolly him out of it with a BJ when you can’t. And that kind of reductive portrayal is not good for anyone. So, yeah, it’s better than Rambo (which is what came to mind when you mentioned the Vietnam vet depiction). But the tragedy of Rambo was always how the town pushed him over the edge, they couldn’t accept him as a wounded man and let him go on with his life. I just wish that more people writing veteran heroes with PTSD would give their struggles more nuance and less… Less vaginas and sex make every nightmare better. But yes, discussing it with sympathy is always better than not, I absolutely agree with that.
And JScot, I’m with you. There’s a Jill Shalvis book where the hero had been in the National Guard and so much of it was wrong, wrong, wrong. And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore Jill Shalvis, but I was asking my husband questions and he was like, oh hell no, shit doesn’t happen like that. (The guy had been deployed overseas in a war zone for 4 successive years. Apparently, they go to great, great, great lengths to NOT do that. Plus, she called the Guard, the Guards and… just no.) And some of it seems so easily researchable, which makes it even more irritating. Actually talk to a couple of guys/girls and their spouses and actually find out about what you’re talking about. Do “our boys” (and girls) some justice and actually portray them as realistic, 3-dimensional people with nuance.
And some of it seems so easily researchable, which makes it even more irritating. Actually talk to a couple of guys/girls and their spouses and actually find out about what you’re talking about. Do “our boys” (and girls) some justice and actually portray them as realistic, 3-dimensional people with nuance.
This. Subtle mistakes don’t bother me as much (eg: not knowing which direction to pass the port *grin*) but simple things like rank structure or what nickname is used by a particular cap badge – things that you can find on Google – that bugs me.
I don’t expect an author to portray PTSD like a textbook, but it’s become such a reductive thing now; a standard, stereotype descriptor of a soldier. That’s not necessarily helpful, even if it does raise awareness of combat stress.
Not every military man or woman gets PTSD and those that do are affected to different degrees, as Jamie rightly points out.
It would be nice if there were more realistic portrayals of the military in literature in general as well as in romance.
@Erica: Absolutely!
If you haven’t yet done so, everyone here should check out Jessica Scott’s books. She’s active military and writes romance. Some of her heroes and heroines have PTSD or other problems, but sex never heals them, though the love of a good man or woman is sometimes what they need to get back on their feet.
I tried one Jessica Scott book and found it confusingly unrealistic and could not finish it, which made me think yet again that there really needs to be a “real vs light” graph on alllll books. Because if Ms. Scott is active duty, it must not be that her books are accidentally unrealistic, these must be intentional authorial choices that are just not my bag. (Which is totally fine, I just want to know in advance so I can read something else.)
My spouse is a vet. I think that many or most people who’ve done a combat deployment are going to have, if they are completely honest, feelings and dynamics relating to that after they come home, and I disagree pretty strongly with the notion of PTSD being binary or surface-visible, like this group of people “gets it” and this group does not and you can tell from the outside – I think PTSD is essentially a brain trying to cope with trauma, and different brains are going to do that in different ways that are beyond personal choice or control. Some people will have the types of feelings they can hold back and not show you if they want (particularly if they are stoic and macho, which- soldiers!), some people will not. A lot of PTSD might also look a lot less like “sexy nightmare flashbacks you can solve with sex!” and a lot more like “I’m not sure life has any meaning, how can I still be in deep human connection with another person” or “I learned from experience that life is random, fragile, and terrifying, and now I can’t turn that back off”, but that’s not really something I’m guessing you’re going to find in romanceland… Overall I’d agree that the typical portrayal of PTSD in romance novels is lightweight and less than accurate, but for myself I’d lump that in with how, in many romance novels, all of the emotions and dynamics are lightweight and less than accurate/realistic. I’d guess that’s what many readers like and that’s why this stuff persists in the marketplace!
It seems to me that if you really tackled For Real the dynamics between a combat veteran with PTSD and physical trauma and the civilian he falls in love with, you’d be more likely to end up with a book that is at least edging toward the literary. And maybe that just isn’t what people want? (I would be into it – that’s essentially what I want from romances, near-literary novels with lots of sexual tension and guaranteed happy endings!)
RE: sex-coyness or sex-shaming or whatever in contemporary romances: ISN’T THAT SO SUPER WEIRD? I recently ran into this in the Lilah Pace book “Asking For It” (well-reviewed here recently, about two people living out their fancy rape fantasies together). Overall I found the book just okay, but there was one bit I found kind of flabbergasting, where in the midst of the fancy rape fantasy enactments, someone pulls out a sex toy from someone else’s bedside table and then the narrator sidebars an explanation that her ex bought it, she never uses it, it just makes her laugh, etc. I found that really remarkable, that you could have a whole book about living out rape fantasies, and STILL have the female character need to hedge about owning a vibrator.
I find it kind of soothing to read historical romances in this regard, where the sex shaming tends to be explicit and on the surface, instead of hidden away to surprise you during a sex scene.
British SAS hero, for your enjoyment:
THE KILLING GAME, by Toni Anderson (my RITA Reader Challenge review from last year). I really liked it, and gave it an A-. I hope the link to the review works, but it is archived on SBTB:
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/rita-reader-challenge-the-killing-game-by-toni-anderson2/
Karina Bliss for Harlequin super romance has a series of interconnected books with I think New Zealand but they might be Australian veterans as the heroes. I don’t remember if anyone has PTSD, I am in fact amazed that my memory has produced this much information.
I quite enjoyed that it was a different military, so I can recommend them to anyone interested in that. I can offer zero comment on the accuracy of any military romance I’ve read, however, even when I know which military is under discussion.
I generally like Karina Bliss books, but I am maybe 68% sure that one of them had a heroine I hated. So…for whatever that’s worth.
The Rowling detective books, I don’t recall the pseudonym, have a detective who was in the British military, or maybe the military police? See, I don’t know if that’s different. Not romances, but really great, and I have definitely convinced myself there will be a romance, it’s just a slow build.
India Grey has written a duo (Fitzroy Legacy) of Harlequin Presents/M&B Modern contemporaries featuring a military hero. The same couple’s story is told in both, spanning a period before and after they are married. I haven’t read either but it seems like the second in particular deals (to some extent) with PTSD.
Very cool! Thanks!