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A review by bruiserwitch
Heartless Heathens by Santana Knox
Did not finish book. Stopped at 41%.
Everyone raves about how great this book is, so I decided to give it a try. I don't mind a dark romance, the overview of the plot and premise looked interesting; I was intrigued to see how they'd portray the anti-religion, anti-Christianity aspect of the story. I couldn't finish it. I don't see the hype.
I returned a free book with Kindle Unlimited. That's how much I disliked this book.
I sat with my feelings about this book for several days after I didn't finish it. I wanted to really think about why I didn't like it. This made my DNF list at 41%, and I just could not bring myself to keep going. This book is just chockfull of red flags, bad behavior (even for a dark romance), and good old fashioned YIKES. The yikes are even doubled down on by the author on social media and that contributed to me not finishing this book.
First of all, this is a deeply poor example of CNC in fiction. CNC is negotiated between sound of mind adults BEFORE these encounters take place. From where I stopped, there is never any sort of conversation that takes place in which any of these characters discuss what's going to happen, how things will happen, and how to stay safe and sane during these encounters. Dark romance is one thing, I understand that it can push the envelope of boundaries, but there is a way to still sit within that genre and follow the safe, sane, and consensual guidelines of kink. This does NONE of that.
Romina is in no way, and is never portrayed as, an emotionally mature adult. She spent the whole of her 18 years of life abused and neglected, has little to no social or interpersonal skills and suddenly falls into these "relationships" with three guys who are hardly as "satanic" as they are 2001 Hot Topic edgelords. She genuinely CANNOT consent to what they're doing to her, she is not of a mature or sound enough mind to do so based on the way she was raised. The guys immediately take advantage of her naivety and lack of social skills. One is straight up try-hard crazy, the other nearly immediately love bombs her, and the third almost killed her during a medical episode. These are not relationships, this is three men taking advantage of a sheltered, terrified girl who legitimately does not know any better of the world.
Romina's lack of knowledge of the world is exploited and played out for jollies and its gross. She's really hardly more than a child and acts like one, and yet these three guys are just fine with dragging her around like a dog (one even calls her pet almost exclusively) and essentially repeatedly assaulting her.
One of the guys even tells her to "never tell me no." If that's not a massive red flag, I don't know what is. She doesn't know what she's doing, or what's being done to her, and he takes away the autonomy she doesn't know she has. None of this is empowering for her, the guys are keeping her sheltered and now grooming her to their likings. It's terrible.
All of the interesting bits of this story fell to second place to how poorly the main female character is treated. I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get past how much they were glorifying treating this poor girl lower than dirt.
I rarely DNF books, but this one just didn't have enough to make me look past how gross the interaction between the main characters is. I read a few things about what happens past the point where I stopped, and I'm still glad I stopped when I did. I didn't find much redeemable about this book, and likely won't pick up any of the author's other works.
I returned a free book with Kindle Unlimited. That's how much I disliked this book.
I sat with my feelings about this book for several days after I didn't finish it. I wanted to really think about why I didn't like it. This made my DNF list at 41%, and I just could not bring myself to keep going. This book is just chockfull of red flags, bad behavior (even for a dark romance), and good old fashioned YIKES. The yikes are even doubled down on by the author on social media and that contributed to me not finishing this book.
First of all, this is a deeply poor example of CNC in fiction. CNC is negotiated between sound of mind adults BEFORE these encounters take place. From where I stopped, there is never any sort of conversation that takes place in which any of these characters discuss what's going to happen, how things will happen, and how to stay safe and sane during these encounters. Dark romance is one thing, I understand that it can push the envelope of boundaries, but there is a way to still sit within that genre and follow the safe, sane, and consensual guidelines of kink. This does NONE of that.
Romina is in no way, and is never portrayed as, an emotionally mature adult. She spent the whole of her 18 years of life abused and neglected, has little to no social or interpersonal skills and suddenly falls into these "relationships" with three guys who are hardly as "satanic" as they are 2001 Hot Topic edgelords. She genuinely CANNOT consent to what they're doing to her, she is not of a mature or sound enough mind to do so based on the way she was raised. The guys immediately take advantage of her naivety and lack of social skills. One is straight up try-hard crazy, the other nearly immediately love bombs her, and the third almost killed her during a medical episode. These are not relationships, this is three men taking advantage of a sheltered, terrified girl who legitimately does not know any better of the world.
Romina's lack of knowledge of the world is exploited and played out for jollies and its gross. She's really hardly more than a child and acts like one, and yet these three guys are just fine with dragging her around like a dog (one even calls her pet almost exclusively) and essentially repeatedly assaulting her.
One of the guys even tells her to "never tell me no." If that's not a massive red flag, I don't know what is. She doesn't know what she's doing, or what's being done to her, and he takes away the autonomy she doesn't know she has. None of this is empowering for her, the guys are keeping her sheltered and now grooming her to their likings. It's terrible.
All of the interesting bits of this story fell to second place to how poorly the main female character is treated. I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get past how much they were glorifying treating this poor girl lower than dirt.
I rarely DNF books, but this one just didn't have enough to make me look past how gross the interaction between the main characters is. I read a few things about what happens past the point where I stopped, and I'm still glad I stopped when I did. I didn't find much redeemable about this book, and likely won't pick up any of the author's other works.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting