Title: A Lady Awakened Series: Blackshear Family #1
Author: Cecilia Grant
Published: December 27, 2011
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 346
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Newly widowed and desperate to protect her estate and beloved servants from her malevolent brother-in-law, Martha Russell conceives a daring plan. Or rather, a daring plan to conceive. After all, if she has an heir on the way, her future will be secured. Forsaking all she knows of propriety, Martha approaches her neighbor, a London exile with a wicked reputation, and offers a strictly business proposition: a month of illicit interludes . . . for a fee.
Theophilus Mirkwood ought to be insulted. Should be appalled. But how can he resist this siren in widow’s weeds, whose offer is simply too outrageously tempting to decline? Determined she’ll get her money’s worth, Theo endeavors to awaken this shamefully neglected beauty to the pleasures of the flesh—only to find her dead set against taking any enjoyment in the scandalous bargain. Surely she can’t resist him forever. But could a lady’s sweet surrender open their hearts to the most unexpected arrival of all . . . love?
This is not your typical historical romance, and man it tried so hard to be different in a good way, and it could have been. But it wasn’t. Cecilia Grant had everything going for her…until the hero raped the heroine. Goddammit.
We’ll get to the rape in a bit, but first we’ll talk about the basic set-up of A Lady Awakened.
Martha Russell’s husband has died, and his brother is going to inherit the land. Except it turns out that the brother is a nasty rapist, and our girl Martha wants to protect her tenants and the house servants. So she decides to hire her neighbor, Theo Mirkwood, as a breeding stud, so she can quickly conceive and pass of the baby as her dead husband’s. Then, naturally, Martha and Theo fall in love and all that juicy stuff.
I rather like what Grant attempted (but did not succeed) to do with Martha’s character. She’s a very serious, emotionally reserved young woman, with a logical, calculating approach toward social work. She’s very, very, very aloof. And Theo works as a good foil, he’s also very young, spoiled, and a bit silly, but only because he’s been allowed to be. The title of the book indicates that it’s Martha that undergoes a lot of change, and she does…sort of. But the biggest character growth in the book is Theo’s, as Martha’s serious and mature outlook on life affect his own actions.
Now, the sex. The first sex scene between the protagonists happens right away. And it sucks. It’s just a business deal, after all. The two then proceed to have mechanical, emotionless sex daily for the remainder of the book. Theo keeps wanting to “awaken Martha’s passions” or somesuch, but she isn’t interested in catching feels at all. That, for one thing, feels a little rapey. If a person tells you they’re not interested in a passionate affair, you should respect that and stick to the terms agreed upon.
Later on, we find out that Martha was sexually abused by her father. Which would explain her total disinterest in sex as a fun, pleasurable experience.
And then, about two hours after that, Theo decides to start having sex with Martha. While she is asleep. And when she wakes up in the middle, he complains, and tells her it would be so much easier if she just went back to sleep.
THAT. IS. RAPE.
This book was written in 2011, a year in which the world had pretty firmly established that a sleeping person is not capable of giving consent. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
I lost all interest in A Lady Awakened right there, honestly, but pressed on with the book in order to see what happened. Not that it really matters, because RAPE. Rape in a novel written in 2011, wherein the rape is never addressed and sorted through. (Say what you want about Bodice Rippers, but rape is clearly labeled as such in those books, and treated accordingly.)
Remember when I read Sherry Thomas’s Not Quite a Husband and got really angry about that time when the dude had sex with the woman while she slept, and she BEGGED him not to, and he kept doing it anyway? Yeah. This shit is not my jam.
