Overall: ⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖 (I had to force myself to repeatedly pick this up and wanted to give up multiple times)
Feels: 🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡
Romance: 💞
Sensuality: 💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥 (There’s a few scenes, most are rape, others are so vague you don’t know what’s going on...)
Humor: No
Perspective: Third person mostly from the heroine, but also the hero, Garth (a side character), and a villain
Percentage which mains are first on page together: 9%
Cliffhanger: No
HEA/HFN: Happily Ever After (bleh)
Epilogue: No
Format: physical book

Should I read in order?
I believe this is a standalone.

Basic plot:
Jennifer is stranded on an island when the ship she was traveling on sinks in the Atlantic during a storm.

Give this a try if you want:
- Georgian time period (1741)
- Island setting (in the Atlantic)
- you’re okay with serious content warnings including murder and rape (by the hero) on page
- kidnapped/captive theme
- body betrayed me trope (where you don’t want to be intimate, but when they touch you your body betrays your brain and falls into passion with them)
- murder mystery
- literal bodice ripping

Ages:
- Heroine is around 20, not sure about the hero but he’s older

First line:

Black, turbulent clouds hugged the horizon, choking out the last bright, golden rays of sunshine.

My thoughts:

“If you’re trying to make me feel guilty, don’t bother. I’ve never felt guilty about anything in my life.”


I wanted to like this book SO BADLY!!!! Look at this cover!!! I am in love!!!

Well, I didn’t like anything about this book except the first 40 pages. Once the hero enters the book, I struggled until the very end. And even the first 40 pages, the heroine is stranded on an island and she admits she’s been a pampered helpless lady her whole life but has no problem making nets to catch fish, builds a shelter with a door and window, starts fires, and knows tons about survival.

I know reading old school romance you never know when you’re going to get some toxic aspects. Misogyny, dubious consent or rape. Severe jealousy. Codependent relationships. I can really love some dark elements. I can looooove dubious consent and pushy, arrogant jerky heroes. But one thing I chase when it comes to that is some form of remorse from the hero. For example, Whitney, My Love by McNaught, while toxic AF has a hero that is at least remorseful. This hero, Chad, had zero remorse and it was awful to read.

He not only rapes the heroine repeatedly, he distrusts her, uses her, threatens her until the very end. He is cruel and comes off as downright stupid to me in some situations.

Those chasing that dark, forbidden old school romance bodice ripper feel should give this one a go. (Maybe for fans of Stormfire by Christine Monson, or The Silver Devil by Teresa Denys?)

It didn’t work for me and I had to force myself to finish it. I saved some quotes below that feature my annoyance with this story. Read at your own risk.

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts: Any typos are my own. Please avoid if you love this book because it’s mostly me ranting.

“So why does the fact that you bedded her upset you?”
“It doesn’t,” Chad growled, rubbing the back of his hand inside the stubble on his chin. He wasn’t about to tell Jason that she had been a virgin. He’d never taken a virgin before, not by force anyway.

Really, you expect me to believe this? Not by force anyway...I’m highly doubting any virgin gave him her virginity willingly.
---
This poor fucking woman. Lived alone on an island for a week, was discovered and immediately raped, dragged and imprisoned at a brothel in town, escapes and then he finds her and is taking his pistol out (so he can rape her again) and she starts to panic thinking he’s going to shoot her. And this is his thought process…

He had no desire to kill her, but he wasn’t against giving her a few bruises which he thought she deserved for all the trouble she’d put him through.

So he doesn’t care at all that she’s terrified of him and hurting herself to get away from him. In his mind she “deserves” it.
---

He could hardly believe she had actually bitten him when all he had done was kiss her. What the hell was the matter with her? And why was she looking at him as though she wanted to stick a knife in his heart? What had he done?

HE’S A FUCKING RAPIST IDIOT
---

He hoped to spark a flame of passion in her that would match his, to have her experience the rapture of desire, the pleasure he could give her; but for a moment his need ebbed when he saw the torment twisting her beautiful face. He couldn’t understand the game she played, why she resisted, why she wouldn’t allow herself to feel the ecstasy this moment could arouse.

Yes, it’s just so hard to figure out. Impossible. She loves to play games, that Jennifer.
---
We also find out one of the reasons he hates women and will never marry is because they are all evil – take the other beautiful woman he found while pirating who he also attempted to rape. Except she had a dagger and almost did him in. He let his crew kill her. There is nothing remorseful about this hero.
---

“Insensitive?” He chuckled. “She wanted to kill me.”
“Because you were trying to rape her!” Jennifer exploded, frowning at him. “You’re barbaric!”
Chad shrugged a shoulder. “If I were barbaric, her death would have been slow and agonizing. I’m sure it wasn’t.”
---
“No, mum. Captain LaShelle won’t allow it. That’s why he brought prostitutes to the village. If his men have need of a woman, they are to come to the inn. Captain LaShelle says the others are to be left alone, that we’re needed to work, not fulfill a man’s pleasures.”

Ahh so other people are told not to rape everything in sight, but this doesn’t apply to him.
---

It was the love of a woman he yearned to know.

Honestly HOW do you think that happens? You aren’t trying very hard here…
---

“I liked Megan!” Tears sprang to her eyes at the unsympathetic look he gave her. “I had nothing to do with this!”
“Then prove it,” he growled, seizing her arm and yanking her forward.

Ummmm you have kept her locked up, imprisoned, and raped this whole book – when exactly would she have time to murder multiple people?
---
This part broke my heart. We’re over 60% into the book and it has been all negative interactions between these two. Chad hasn’t budged an inch from his claim on King Asshole and this scene had the possibility to impart a bit of change in their relationship, a bit of vulnerability and closeness. But no, we get this (scene: the heroine put dinner together and he purposefully missed it to stay in town)

“You didn’t ruin my dinner,” she gently pointed out. “You ruined yours. But since you’ve already eaten, nothing’s really lost.”
“Damn it, woman!” he raged, hurling himself off the sofa. “Why don’t you whine and cry and complain the way you’re supposed to? The way any other woman would?”


So it’s like, she’s fucked no matter what. When she disobeys you, you rage at her. When you rape her, you rage at her. When she’s nice to you, you rage at her. I had wanted to chuck this book since page 50 but this is the point where I knew I was done.
---
We come to a part where the hero actually opens up about his feelings and he admits he has daddy issues and he just wants his father’s love. That is why he left home and pillaged and raped everyone. Daddy’s love!
---
We are at the END of the book and the hero and heroine are being reunited and we get this shit. Like how am I supposed to be believe in a HEA after he thinks like this right up until the end? Nope. Nope.

Why had she come back? If all she had ever truly wanted was the leave the island, to escape him, what had made her change her mind? He’d wondered if he should just shoot her before she had a chance to explain, before she could lie to him. Or should he torture her, make her watch while Garth and his men were executed one by one, knowing she would be left for last? Aye. He was angry enough to do either of those things. And he had the right. For the first time in his life, he’d allowed himself to give way to his emotions. He had fallen in love with her and she had betrayed him. He could pull out his pistol and kill her right where she stood and no one would blame him. He wanted to.

---
LISTEN TO THE LAST LINE OF THIS BOOK! This shows the heroine still fears the hero, still knows he doesn’t trust her. Their HEA doesn’t exist, she experienced the classic Stockholm syndrome and is now in an abusive relationship.

Tears of joy filled her eyes, and when she blinked, they spilled over her lashes and raced down her cheeks. Slipping her arms up around his neck, she kissed him feverishly and silently pledged that he would never find cause to change his mind.

Lastly what happened to the poor cat????
 

Content warnings:

- tobacco plantation owning heroine (her father) – it’s not a big part of the story but mentioned a few times
- scenes of cooking and eating fish
- repeated rape on page by the hero that slowly turns more into body betrayed me scenes
- murder on page (one is of a younger woman (I can’t recall if she was an older child or not), that ends with her legs being chopped off, another is a repeated stabbing
- violence and death on page
- threats of sexual assault/rape by another character
- not like other girls vibes throughout the book (and the other women are either nasty to her, and the one that befriends her is murdered immediately after)
- heroine slaps the hero (I mean, he deserved more than that!)
- some mentions of god and praying (not a big part)
- heroine is imprisoned without a blanket and with rats (by the hero)
- sex shaming (heroine’s thoughts) She cringed at the thought of having to allow a man – any man – to touch her just because he had paid for the privilege, and she swung her bare feet to the floor. How could a woman do such a thing? Didn’t she have any pride in herself? Shrugging it off as something she truly didn’t care to learn, much less discuss with someone, Jennifer went ot the dresser and picked up the brush.
- hero calls the heroine a bitch

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: 

Nope 

 
Pg 48 – rape of the heroine
Pg 118 – hero rapes the heroine in the brothel
Ppg 232 – starts as rape at the brothel, then turns to body betrayed me (you could read it that it’s implied the heroine orgasms)
PG 307 – missionary scene that is short and not descriptive 
Pg 339 – another sex scene that is vague and you can’t tell what is happening
Pg 473 – brief mention of past sex happening
Total pages - 493