Do you like your heroes really really fucked up? Then have I got a book for you!
I am on a romance novel kick, as happens periodically, and am currently reading one that really hits all my kinks - Charlotte Featherstone's Sinful. If you like truly messed-up heroes with awful pasts, glorious hurt/comfort and some deliciously descriptive writing, this is the book for you.
Set in Victorian England, Sinful follows two people - (1) Jane, a rather plain, no-nonsense nurse that yearns for security and respectability (she was an illegitimate child rescued from poverty by a benefactress) but cannot deny her pull towards Matthew, Earl of something-or-other, who cannot marry her, and who is totally fucked up, but who makes her go weak in the knees (and elsewhere). (2) Matthew, Earl of whatever, has really grim views on life, morality, women, and pretty much everything - I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say he was sexually abused by his stepmother as a young adult, and that has fucked him up for life. And then he gets mugged and in a London hospital, where a nurse he cannot see (his eyes are bandaged) evokes from him something other than disgust (or disgust-lust combo) for the first time.
It's a pretty unusual book, for a romance novel. For one, it's significantly darker than most romance novels I've read. Honestly, really really dark - Matthew's headspace, especially, is all sorts of not good. Both Jane and Matthew have their own issues and Matthew is pretty much an utter wreck - Jane makes him better gradually through the book (the comfort part of the 'hurt/comfort' scenario in this is really really wonderful), but it's pretty clear he is going to be somewhat fucked up for the rest of his life. And unlike most romance novels, where hero remains chaste since his meeting the heroine, this is not the case here. When he thinks he lost her, he goes back to the whores and his damage. And he is forced to get married and even though he and his wife do not live together, at the end of the book, Jane is his mistress not his wife, even if she is his wife in everything but name and he tells her he will divorce his wife as soon as his father dies (long story). That is a first for me, in a romance novel. It's realistic but might turn people off.
It's a great read though and I love it. And if, like me, you need heroes who have damage and/or who cannot function without the heroine, this is the book for you.
Featherstone seems to specialize in dark corners of Victoriana for her romances - apparently there is another novel in which the hero is an opium addict trying to kick his addiction. I think I will read it next.
Set in Victorian England, Sinful follows two people - (1) Jane, a rather plain, no-nonsense nurse that yearns for security and respectability (she was an illegitimate child rescued from poverty by a benefactress) but cannot deny her pull towards Matthew, Earl of something-or-other, who cannot marry her, and who is totally fucked up, but who makes her go weak in the knees (and elsewhere). (2) Matthew, Earl of whatever, has really grim views on life, morality, women, and pretty much everything - I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say he was sexually abused by his stepmother as a young adult, and that has fucked him up for life. And then he gets mugged and in a London hospital, where a nurse he cannot see (his eyes are bandaged) evokes from him something other than disgust (or disgust-lust combo) for the first time.
It's a pretty unusual book, for a romance novel. For one, it's significantly darker than most romance novels I've read. Honestly, really really dark - Matthew's headspace, especially, is all sorts of not good. Both Jane and Matthew have their own issues and Matthew is pretty much an utter wreck - Jane makes him better gradually through the book (the comfort part of the 'hurt/comfort' scenario in this is really really wonderful), but it's pretty clear he is going to be somewhat fucked up for the rest of his life. And unlike most romance novels, where hero remains chaste since his meeting the heroine, this is not the case here. When he thinks he lost her, he goes back to the whores and his damage. And he is forced to get married and even though he and his wife do not live together, at the end of the book, Jane is his mistress not his wife, even if she is his wife in everything but name and he tells her he will divorce his wife as soon as his father dies (long story). That is a first for me, in a romance novel. It's realistic but might turn people off.
It's a great read though and I love it. And if, like me, you need heroes who have damage and/or who cannot function without the heroine, this is the book for you.
Featherstone seems to specialize in dark corners of Victoriana for her romances - apparently there is another novel in which the hero is an opium addict trying to kick his addiction. I think I will read it next.