A review by rhodered
no way out by Eric Alan Westfall
Did not finish book.
It’s a moderately good regency marred by a lack of pacing in one section. So why only two stars? Misogyny.
At the start of the book, a young woman is excoriated in the lead character’s mind for having a sex life that, rumored exaggeration aside, was entirely normal for the time period. He’s shaming her, calling her a whore, thinking her disgusting ... while holding in high esteem an equally young man who is an actual sex worker. (I don’t mind sex workers, I do mind double standards.)
We never meet the young woman again. There’s no reason in the plot for the hero’s dramatic disgust of her.
Later he treats another young woman badly, with zero empathy for probably ruining her life for no fault of her own.
And at the end of the book, he uses excessively ugly language repeatedly (including fat shaming and making crude remarks about the stupidity of women) about a woman who is a hapless, mostly quiet, entirely innocent bystander to his conversation with another man.
Aside from dead mothers and a very few women in the Ton who appear briefly for the purposes of plot, there are no other woman characters I can recall and zero positive ones. Not even servants. It’s clear this author really wants his men to exist in a void with nothing but men and if a woman deigns to enter the room, he reviles her for no real reason.
It’s sexism and hate. And I’m wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s entirely unaware of it.
At the start of the book, a young woman is excoriated in the lead character’s mind for having a sex life that, rumored exaggeration aside, was entirely normal for the time period. He’s shaming her, calling her a whore, thinking her disgusting ... while holding in high esteem an equally young man who is an actual sex worker. (I don’t mind sex workers, I do mind double standards.)
We never meet the young woman again. There’s no reason in the plot for the hero’s dramatic disgust of her.
Later he treats another young woman badly, with zero empathy for probably ruining her life for no fault of her own.
And at the end of the book, he uses excessively ugly language repeatedly (including fat shaming and making crude remarks about the stupidity of women) about a woman who is a hapless, mostly quiet, entirely innocent bystander to his conversation with another man.
Aside from dead mothers and a very few women in the Ton who appear briefly for the purposes of plot, there are no other woman characters I can recall and zero positive ones. Not even servants. It’s clear this author really wants his men to exist in a void with nothing but men and if a woman deigns to enter the room, he reviles her for no real reason.
It’s sexism and hate. And I’m wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s entirely unaware of it.