Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - Still Beating

This was an about the after, and because the kidnapping is what it kicks it all off, it felt like a half hearted effort at being trauma porn as a healing process. It was uncomfortable, and it was like an accident you are rubbernecking as slowly as possible because it’s too unreal to look away. I should’ve just kept on driving.

Content Warnings

jordiemooon's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

booknerdxo88's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

happilyruined's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

2/5. Releases 7/11/2023.

Note: this book was published previously; this is a review of a re-release ARC. Additionally, this review will discuss sexual assault extensively, as this is a crucial part of the novel.

For when you're vibing with... girls who aren't like other girls, actually, heroes who deserve better, and compelling ideas that went somewhere.

Cora hates her sister Mandy's fiance, Dean, and has ever since they started dating. But when Cora and Dean are kidnapped by a sadistic serial killer, they not only suffer at his hands, but are forced to have sex in front of him--repeatedly. After being rescued, Dean and Cora are fundamentally changed and bonded; and only they know what actually happened in the basement.

To be clear: when I give this book a low rating, it's not because I hate the idea. The idea is why I requested it. I knew this was a dark romance (and to an extent it is) I'm good with that, I knew it had sexual assault on the page, I'm good with that (though I am dubious on how it's handled). I appreciate the content warnings at the opening of the book. My issues are not about concept--the concept is the thing I like. My issues concern execution.

Quick Takes:

--I'll be clear here so that nobody readying this review toddles into this book confused about the sexual assault. Cora is raped by the serial killer, Earl (.... come on, couldn't we come up with a more creative serial killer name?) multiple times. Earl also makes Cora and Dean have sex, which neither of them want (though Dean can't help having an orgasm and Cora does get off in the last encounter, which sets off the second act turmoil). This means that Earl is raping both Dean and Cora, full stop. Dean says he was forced to rape Cora and has, understandably, a ton of conflict over it; I get this. It's a totally believable emotional reaction to what happened to him, and most of the believable emotional reactions in this book are Dean's. What bothers me is not that Cora doesn't see Dean as having raped her (an understandable response, and truly Dean was the mechanism of the rapist and not the rapist), but that NOBODY tells Dean that he was also raped. Like. Our cast of characters seems reasonably well-educated. I'm not looking for a Very Special Episode conversation, but nobody seems to emphasize to Dean "Hey, YOU WERE RAPED". It just bugs me a lot, because I got the sense that the narrative did not buy into Dean being assaulted.

Also, I'll be real... I went into this knowing there would be rape, but the amount of times Earl rapes Cora himself surprised me. It really served no narrative purpose. Obviously, I don't mind rape being a focal point of this novel, but that's where it felt gratuitous, especially because the sticking point of the trauma was what he made Dean do to Cora.

--The thing that bothered me most, however, is that from page one, Cora is better than her sister Mandy because she is not like other girls. Mandy has "bleach blond" hair, unlike Cora, who has normal gold hair. Cora loves books and keeps wanting Dean to read Of Mice and Men to get smarter, whereas Mandy is a hair stylist. (Of Mice and Men may be important, but a fun read it is not, fuck off Cora.) Mandy never got in trouble for all the bad things she did, like wrecking a car when she was a teenager, or having parties!!! Oh, and naturally, Dean actually saw and wanted Cora first when they were teens, because he likes 'em natural, unlike Mandy. Honestly man, what Cora and Dean go through is enough for me to believe in them being trauma bonded. I can believe there was an underlying attraction neither wanted to acknowledge beforehand. I don't need to see Cora uplifted as Better Than Mandy for me to believe in the love story. In fact, the more this is done, the more the love story is undermined.

--Also, Mandy is clearly a normal hot girl trying her best, but in order to again underline that she is not as good as Cora, the author has her say RIDICULOUS SHIT. Like "oh Dean, you were only held captive and tortured by a serial killer for THREE WEEKS, I'd think you'd be over it by now". "Oh Dean, why aren't we fucking yet, it's been six weeks since you were held captive by a serial killer"? Bringing up an incredibly personal thing her sister experienced and was keeping a secret in gENERAL CONVERSATION? It's like, nobody's perfect, I'm not asking for perfect Mandy, but no real person who is not clinically insane would say these things in these circumstances. And we see later than Mandy is a loving, empathetic, remarkably forgiving woman, so why was she so callous before? There's also one more gut punch thing added in that makes zero sense, and literally serves no purpose except to say "Mandy didn't deserve Dean anyway".

But every person in the book who doesn't like Cora or exists to make Cora look better acts this way. There is a conversation, in public, overheard that... Like... I'm sorry, I just don't buy two totally sane people saying this kind of shit out loud, in public, in a WORKPLACE, about a kidnapping survivor they work with. I just don't. They'd keep it to the group chat as God intended.

--Oh, and another thing: Dean and Cora developing these feelings is treated by other characters as like a "welp, I guess Mandy just needs to accept it" thing, and she has been with this man for FIFTEEN YEARS. FIFTEEN. YEARS. That's longer than many marriages! And also, if Dean was in a mid relationship for FIFTEEN YEARS and liked her sister first, why did he never make a move before being with someone for FIFTEEN YEARS and proposing to her? (While somehow, never moving in with her...?)

--Aside from this and one moment in which he says that Cora's ex cheated on her with "some floozy" (file under things a man in his early thirties would never say in the 2020s) Dean is actually really likable and his perspective was a respite. It felt like he was recovering from trauma, whereas Cora's perspective felt like she was recovering from trauma in a way that Sam Levinson would write, and not in a "this is wild I'm so entertained" episode of Euphoria. I felt bad for him. I thought that there was a lot more going on with him that needed to be unpacked, whereas Cora's issues seemed more straightforward and confronted by the text.

--This girl does something so ludicrous to aid in her recovery that I did laugh. Then I remembered she was 29.

--One more note... Like, I'm all for insulting the serial killer, but the amount of times Dean's insults of the serial killer hinged on him being fat was like? Weird to me? Romance has this thing where the villains are often fat (and it exists across subgenres) and like? Personally, if Earl was as out of shape as the book suggested (which, to be fair, you can be fat and in shape but I didn't get that vibe from Earl) I'm not certain as to how he physically defeated big and fit Dean that easily in the beginning. He's literally kidnapped and is torturing y'all on the daily, is there not a better insult than "fat"?

--Weird note, but there is a "joke" Cora played on Dean referenced several times in which she told a college friend of his coming to town that Dean had a crush on him, then slipped Dean Viagra while telling him it was aspirin so he was popping a boner around this friend the whole night. This is treated as funny. That is not only pretty much sexual assault and definitely drugging someone; it's homophobic? How do I root for this woman?

The Sex Stuff:

The (consensual) sex scenes were well written. The sexual assault scenes are a lot more vague, as they should be. I respect the way the non-consensual scenes between Dean an d Cora were written. It's a hard balance to strike, and I'm sympathetic to that as a writer--you don't want to titillate, but you do have to communicate that there was just a seismic shift and realization for our leads.

Look, I didn't like this, and I went in thinking "I'm the type of reader who can handle this book". And I could handle all the dark shit. I just couldn't handle how much the text bent over backwards to uplift the heroine and trash her sister. Sincerely, if this book works for you, go with God, I am not judging. It just didn't for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloom Books for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Content Warnings