Marna
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Trite and trashy, it puts the "rape" into bodice-ripper
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I am so glad I didn't pay money for this book.
I picked this up at my local library. It was a new book and I vaguely recognized the author's name so decided to give it a try. Little did I know it is a reprint of a 1980 romance novel. Romance novels have come a loooooong way since 1980 and this book is an excellent (negative) example of what the genre has evolved from.
Synopsis: Marna is a fifteen year old (yes, fifteen) living on the Kentucky frontier with her grandmother and abusive grandfather. Marna's grandmother lets her run wild and encourages poor hygiene in order to hide Marna's beauty from the neanderthal men around them. Enter Matt, a fur trapper raised by his grandfather to view women as expendable. Marna and Matt enter a marriage of convenience in order to save Marna from her reprehensible grandfather. Marna and Matt then struggle with their feelings for one another against a background of the American Revolution and early frontier life.
By page 50, I realized that every woman who had been introduced had been raped or horribly abused in some fashion. It did not get better from there. Matt turns a blind eye to the repeated abuse of a woman in his trapping party. Matt also has no problem with expending some of his "male energies" on the madam of the brothel, repeatedly and with no regret. Marna figures out what Matt does with his time and accepts it without demur. Matt also basically rapes Marna later in the book; Marna, of course, has no issue with his bad behavior but thinks it is proof of his feelings for her.
I have no idea why or how these two characters fell in love with one another. One page they are spitting at one another and on the next they are harboring secret feelings for each other. This book is poorly written with little access to the inside of the characters' heads. Of course, considering the actions they make, perhaps I don't want to know what is in their heads.
Stay far, far away from this book. |
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