Nadine in NY Jones's Reviews > Tender Is the Storm

"... your mistake was in not killing me when you had the chance.”

Feral’s eyes widened in sudden understanding, but understanding came too late. He smelled death, his own.

Dun-dun-DUNNNNHH!!

He. Smelled. His. Own. Death.

Good lord. This was completely idiotic. I'm not one of those readers who revels in the crazysauce. The only reason I'm reading this is to fulfill "bestseller the year you graduated high school" challenge category in the 2018 Popsugar challenge. I was quite sorry I picked this book, but it wasn't awful enough to dnf, so I kept going.

It's books like this that made me think I didn't like romance, back in the 80s, when I was a teen. This is just chock full of casual racism and casual sexism and where is that brain bleach I ordered to recover from this??!!??

The entire plot is threaded through with vaguely sexist nonsense like this:

“I don’t know why I’m even discussing this with you,” she said defensively. “There will be no marriage rights before the marriage.”

“Will you force me to fetch the preacher then just to ease my pain?”

Her belly tightened. “What pain?”

He frowned. “Don’t play with me, Sharisse. You can’t have been married and not know any more about men than that. You feel this.” He pressed her hips firmly to his, and she gasped. “You think that doesn’t hurt if I can’t do anything about it?”

“I… I…” Her face flamed red, and she tried with all her might to push away from him. “I’m sorry, I—”

“All right.” He cut her off sharply and let her go. Then he cursed himself, seeing the fear in her eyes. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Sharisse. I know I’m rushing you, and I apologize. But you’re so damn desirable.”

“You… you’re not going for the preacher, are you?” she asked hesitantly.

Is that what had frightened her? “How the hell should I know?” His voice rose again. “Damn, you frustrate me, woman!”

He turned on his heel and left the house. Sharisse ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t go through that again. What on earth was she going to do?

If you're wondering about the casual racism, it's basically a lot of this:

Sharisse managed a smile for the Indian girl. “Yes, I’m fine, really. I was just remembering something… distasteful. So you are Billy Wolf’s wife?”

The girl nodded. She was quite exotic looking, with almond-shaped eyes in an oval face, straight black hair that fell just below her shoulders, and smooth, dark skin. She wore a faded blue skirt that just reached her bare feet and a loose long-sleeved blue shirt. Sharisse had not expected her to be quite so lovely or gentle looking, not with that heathen for a husband.

She. Was. Quite. Exotic. Looking.

Okay.

On top of that, the romance isn't even very romantic. Sharisse doesn't even like Luke! Sure, her lady-parts go all a-flutter when he kisses her, but she doesn't seem to enjoy any of it, it's more akin to a dog in heat who doesn't particularly want to be mounted but goes through with it anyway.

She surprised herself by having fun learning things, and she began to wish Lucas would just stay away. She wasn’t looking forward to a return of the tension his presence caused.

I don't blame Sharisse for feeling tepid about the guy. There's nothing appealing about him. Here in this scene he approaches her like she's a piece of tasty fried chicken, and it's been far too long since he had himself some KFC. He gets all rapey and that's okay because she starts moaning for it anyway.

His hand slipped behind her neck, exerting a gentle pressure that drew her forward. “No,” she whispered. “No. Please.” She could hardly breathe.

His mouth closed over hers, hot and demanding. Fear shivered down her backbone. A knee parted her legs and pressed against her groin, and she couldn’t stop him. An ardent shock followed that reverberated through her system, and she moaned despite herself.

I was excited that there was a character named Nadine, but she only had one (completely unimportant) scene.

And, speaking of only one scene, what in the world was the point of the cougar in the prologue??? (view spoiler)[ I was so sure that would come up again as some sort of "funny" plot twist, maybe Sharisse would be terrified and brave Luke would swagger in to save her. But it never showed up again. (hide spoiler)]

And, finally, the most unforgivable sin: this book implies (and at times overtly states) that women do not know their own minds and desires.

Did she love the fellow perhaps without knowing it? Was she only hurt by his rejection?

I have A LOT of other issues with this book (view spoiler)[not least of which, how completely ridiculous it is that (a) he could deceive everyone and pretend to be two people, and (b) she could give birth to his twin daughters and hide that fact completely until he noticed the stretch marks on her breasts. Ugh. And in both cases they just laugh off the deception oh hahaha how funny that you have deceived me utterly but I still love you and I'm not the least bit irritated, let's have sex again! (hide spoiler)] but I'll just leave it at that. I'm sure the author thought she was being very clever, but that was just inane.

Good lord, 80's, why were you so awful and how did I manage to grow up??!!

The funny (?) thing is, my other choice for "1985 bestseller" was Robots and Empire, but I'd really been put off by the sexism in The Robots of Dawn when I read it earlier this year, and I didn't want to struggle through that again, so I chose this, which turned out to be equally vile in very different ways.