Sunset Embrace Book

DNF-ing at about 65%.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!! Don't read on unless you want the details.

I read this book in the past and remember liking it, although I do recall that the hero was a standout jerk at first. Upon this reread, I confirmed my earlier thoughts but honestly, he went way beyond jerk territory into complete asshole.

The premise is already an uncomfortable one at the beginning. In the opening scene, Lydia is giving birth to a stillborn baby conceived through rape via her stepbrother. She's ready to die and okay with the fact that the baby is dead. A couple of boys from a passing wagon train stumble upon her and the baby, and their ma and pa take her in. Coincidentally, Ross Coleman's wife dies in labor a few days later and Lydia is needed as a milk cow to keep the baby alive.

Ross is an unbelievable ass. I understand that he is grieving, but the way he treats others says so much about him. Lydia is dealing with a horrific past and a shaky, scary present, and yet she maintains her dignity and poise. Ross just turns into a mean, nasty person. He loves calling her a whore, treating her like a second class citizen, making her feel like a burden to him, and constantly letting her know how she could never measure up to his dead wife.

The cherry on the top of his degradation of Lydia is when he rapes her...literally holds her down, bruises her wrists, fucks her raw, and does this while she's screaming and crying out in pain, begging him to stop. There's no forced seduction here, nothing titillating or pleasing about this encounter. And yet somehow, when Lydia...who has never known sex to be anything but rape...thinks about this encounter the next day with tenderness and longing. What the actual fuck? This is the point where I lose interest in the story, because no matter what happens from here on out, I can't get past the rape, and I can't imagine a woman who is brutalized that way romanticizing it the very next day. I know sometimes I enjoy stories with forced seduction and scenes that ride fine line between that and rape. I have no excuses except that often there are subtleties that influence my opinion, and I don't feel the need to make excuses for my preferences. They are what they are

Seeing as how I'm a romance reader and let's face it...romance is often predictable...I'm fairly certain I know how the book will play out. But I'm listening to the audiobook, and still have something like four or five hours to go before the end. I'm just not interested in investing that much more time in it.