Heat Factor: It slipped in. Consent optional. Do you need consent if you’re married?
Character Chemistry: He is large, grumpy and swarthy, and she is fair, smol and pure. How can they not fall in love?
Plot: One damn thing after the next, caused by miscommunication and stupidity.
Overall: They’re mad at each other, but they don’t know why they’re mad at each other, and they won’t stop doing dumb things to each other.
versus
The Bride by Julie Garwood (1989)
Heat Factor: It’s the sexiest one we’ve read so far in the Old School read-a-thon
Character Chemistry: It’s The Taming of the Shrew, but who’s taming who?
Plot: Jamie’s like, “You told me to handle it! So I handled it.”
Overall: This book is absolutely delightful.
Content Note: These books contain rape, ablism, and racism and we discuss this content in our review. Also, sorry, Ranulf of The Black Lyon is not actually a Hottie McScottie, but he’s got highlander energy.
Heat Factor: He basically rapes her in Chapter 1, and then they very gently make love once or twice toward the end.
Character Chemistry: Some Old Skool Dynamics, for sure.
Plot: When Carly gets pregnant, she and Hank get Insurance Married.
Overall: I read this book fully expecting it to be cringe and ended up getting swept away. But now that I’m actually thinking about it, there was indeed a lot of cringe.
Heat Factor: “His warmth and passion” is “led on to his nest.”
Character Chemistry: Is it abuse or is it love? Hard to tell.
Plot: Brandon rapes Heather. They are forced to get married. And then Brandon takes Heather to South Carolina, where shenanigans occur and also they somehow decide they’re in love.
Overall: It’s all totally yikes or totally infuriating and sometimes both!
Please note: This book includes rape, abuse, chattel slavery, and ableism (among other things), which we discuss in this review.
Heat Factor: The whole middle of the book is pretty much sex.
Character Chemistry: feelings are annoying
Plot: The new White House Press Secretary worked with the president once many years ago. This time he’s not about to let her get away.
Overall: I was put off by the way the president was initially represented (it’s single POV from Clover), and that kind of snowballed with other things as I continued to read