Reviews tagging 'Sexual harassment'

The Duke I Tempted by Scarlett Peckham

1 review

friends2lovers's review

emotional sad tense slow-paced

2.0

There were times while reading this I got so frustrated or bored that I wondered if this would end up being a 1-star. Overall, the book is kind of a mess. But, there were a few scenes that, individually, were beautifully written and cinematic. So I can’t say I totally disliked it. In between the sparse good bits, though, the book lacked focus and felt very disjointed. Plot threads didn’t come together in a satisfactory way. One chapter followed another without a clear, strong through line, so there was nothing compelling me to keep reading. The characterizations, their personalities, motivations, and reasoning, were inconsistent and confusing. An inciting incident would occur and instead of letting the characters deal with the fallout on page, there would be a time jump (days, weeks, or months) where suddenly they’re acting completely different. Their relationship didn't progress, it reset. It was all so jarring, I felt like I was reading about 5 different couples.

On Peckham’s website, she says, “This is a gothic-style romance and contains a LOT of angst.” I would not describe this as a gothic-style romance; the gothic elements are minimal. However, there IS a lot of angst. They’re both in their own heads a lot and not communicating. The only significant secondary character in the story is Archer’s sister, Constance, and neither he nor Poppy turn to her for advice, guidance, or even just a listening ear. Without any outside, influencing perspective, their perceptions and assumptions about each other are constantly distorted. Which leads to a lot of ridiculous melodrama. For angst to work for me, I have to know the characters well enough to understand and sympathize with their situation. Since the characters in this were so poorly drawn and perplexing, the angst was annoying.

Poppy, in particular, is a baffling character. She acts out in childish, retaliatory ways. I could never quite comprehend where her reactions or emotions were coming from, they all seemed out-of-the-blue. For example . . . There’s a villainous character, Tom, who harasses Poppy, and Archer is there to witness it a couple of times. The first time, Tom has snuck onto Archer’s estate to speak with Poppy, and Archer sees their interaction as it’s beginning to get heated. Archer intervenes and tells Tom to leave (which he has every right to do since Tom was there uninvited and harassing one of his employees). However, Poppy’s reaction is to get angry and berate Archer for interfering. The second time, Poppy is inexplicably grateful that Archer swoops in to save her. I believe these two scenes are meant to mirror each other. But I struggled so much to follow the trajectory of her character and their relationship, that I can't even begin to explain why such similar incidents would provoke opposite reactions.

The final nail in the coffin for Poppy’s character occurs late in the book, when she

runs into a burning building to save her business documents. Archer risks his own life to save her and she becomes enraged, shouting she’ll never forgive him! As if he deliberately set out to ruin her business or something. She’s supposedly madly in love with this man, yet there’s no self awareness, regret, or even acknowledgement on her part that her idiotic actions could have gotten him killed. If her livelihood were at stake, I could understand her desperation, but she’s a duchess who has the money, time, and resources to rebuild her business. We’re meant to feel sorry for Poppy because she’s lonely and her nursery business is all she has left. Yet, I can’t bring myself to root for a character who places her business or profession over everything and everyone else. And I hate how the whole incident serves as a catalyst for Archer (not Poppy), who thinks he’s to blame for making her feel unloved.

I’m honestly really confused by the entire chain of events in this book. When I sat down to write this review, just a day after finishing it, I couldn’t remember in what order certain events or conversations took place because there is no logical flow to them.

Finally, I want to note that I read this series backwards (3, 2, 1) and I enjoyed the other two books a lot more. I remember The Earl I Ruined being a little messy and annoyingly angsty, too. But I highly recommend Peckham’s The Lord I Left and the erotic short story Widow in Emerald.

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Endnotes

Series: The Secrets of Charlotte Street #1

Genre: Historical Romance

Setting: Wiltshire and London, England; July & December 1753 (Georgian era)

Hero: Archer Stonewell, the Duke of Westmead, age 34

Heroine: Poppy Cavendish, botanist, owns a plant nursery, age 25 or 26?

Tropes/Themes: class difference, starchy hero, marriage of convenience, marriage in trouble, put a baby in me (sort of)

Length: 313 pages, 85k words (novel)

Read Date: February 3, 2022

Heat Index: 4.3 🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️

Heat Notes:

5 full, moderately explicit sex scenes. BDSM/kink includes whipping, masochism, dom/sub (hero is the submissive), and light bondage. The hero keeps his kinky preferences a secret. Other than his fantasizing, kink is not depicted on-page frequently. Kink is featured in two very brief scenes and one full sex scene.

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Quotes

Beware of spoilers!

They could not go on like this.
Because the darkness of that scene was hateful. Its pleasures, such as they were, a slinging of anger back and forth.
The words he’d said to her were cruel.
The things she’d done to him were insulting.
They would not have felt so vital were they not a symptom of a bitter war that she was losing.
The fact that she’d enjoyed it left her lonely and afraid. She longed to knock on his door and apologize. To curl up beside him in the dark and say that she was sorry and confused and sad and ask him what that coupling had meant and why this marriage hurt so much.
She could not imagine what he’d say.
They’d done altogether too much talking. Whatever this ragged thing between them was, conversing served only to make it worse.

Too much talking?! Conversing would make it worse?! Ugh.

Keep him safe, she whispered to herself as they clattered over the dark roads. Don’t let him do something foolish—trying to save lives, or things, or—and then she remembered.
She’d forgotten to take her papers home with her. Her ledgers, files, correspondence, all her annotated plans—she’d overlooked them in the tumult, shaken from the scene with Tom. They would burn.
Years of careful research and months of breakneck work. The future for which she’d traded in her past.
All locked in the bloody cabinets behind her bloody desk.
Prayers could be changed midutterance.
Let me get there in time, she whispered. Oh God, please don’t let them burn.

This is when Poppy completely lost my sympathy.

“Enough, Poppy,” he yelled, beating his head back against the wooden headboard. The pain of it centered him. He did it again.
“Stop that! You will injure yourself.”
He opened his mouth and laughed, a nasty, mirthless snarl. “Will I? Rich words from the likes of a woman who ran into a burning building.”
“It was not yet burning,” she said with a petulant toss of her head. For once, her determined jaw and tumbling hair did not move him. He wanted to shake her.

Ah, yes, petulant is a good word to describe Poppy. I wanted to shake her, too.

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