Christine Monson, Stormfire & Judith McNaught, Whitney, My Love
So in a recent post I was casting about for a new book to read. I'd just settled on Hearts in Atlantis (Stephen King) for my daily commute, when a thread in snacky's LJ on Flowers in the Attic inspired me to look for something else.
loligo, you may recall this. A few months ago I asked melymbrosia about a scary-ass historical romance I stumbled into as a teenager. None of us could remember the title, but the description is locked in my brain:
The book opens with the heroine, Catherine, naked in bed with some guy. Then, she's kidnapped by the hero and taken into his house as a servant. He rapes her, they fall in love, then they find out they're actually brother and sister (yeah, stop laughing), then they find out they're not. In the meantime, she actually marries someone else and has sex with him (I remembered this for such a long time, because it was really not standard romance convention as I knew it).
Long story short, Snacky's post clued me into how I might better structure a Google search (i.e., look for "romance heroine Catherine rape incest" *g*), and luckily, some message board just had a discussion on the book a couple of weeks ago: Stormfire by Christine Monson, published in 1984 by Avon. I went ahead and ordered a $20 used copy through Amazon, the cheapest I could find, and will report back here when I've reread it (and recovered from the trauma *g*).
I hate to mock the message board discussion that led me to the book -- oh, who am I kidding. I love to mock.
Can you believe that some of the posters are just as bothered by the fact that the hero and heroine sleep with other people as they are by the rape and the incest themes? Can you believe that some of the posters, in comparing the hero to Clayton of Whitney, My Love (Judith McNaught), actually profess to be Clayton fans? This is a guy who, because he thought Whitney had lied to him, took a riding crop to her and then raped her. A real prince, huh?
I had no idea such a loathsome bastard was so beloved. I couldn't have been more than thirteen or so when I first read Whitney, and even then I knew enough to know that the so-called "hero" was shit. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised he makes readers swoon. I am in fandom, after all. *ducks*
loligo, you may recall this. A few months ago I asked melymbrosia about a scary-ass historical romance I stumbled into as a teenager. None of us could remember the title, but the description is locked in my brain:
The book opens with the heroine, Catherine, naked in bed with some guy. Then, she's kidnapped by the hero and taken into his house as a servant. He rapes her, they fall in love, then they find out they're actually brother and sister (yeah, stop laughing), then they find out they're not. In the meantime, she actually marries someone else and has sex with him (I remembered this for such a long time, because it was really not standard romance convention as I knew it).
Long story short, Snacky's post clued me into how I might better structure a Google search (i.e., look for "romance heroine Catherine rape incest" *g*), and luckily, some message board just had a discussion on the book a couple of weeks ago: Stormfire by Christine Monson, published in 1984 by Avon. I went ahead and ordered a $20 used copy through Amazon, the cheapest I could find, and will report back here when I've reread it (and recovered from the trauma *g*).
I hate to mock the message board discussion that led me to the book -- oh, who am I kidding. I love to mock.
Can you believe that some of the posters are just as bothered by the fact that the hero and heroine sleep with other people as they are by the rape and the incest themes? Can you believe that some of the posters, in comparing the hero to Clayton of Whitney, My Love (Judith McNaught), actually profess to be Clayton fans? This is a guy who, because he thought Whitney had lied to him, took a riding crop to her and then raped her. A real prince, huh?
I had no idea such a loathsome bastard was so beloved. I couldn't have been more than thirteen or so when I first read Whitney, and even then I knew enough to know that the so-called "hero" was shit. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised he makes readers swoon. I am in fandom, after all. *ducks*