This really is a peculiar book. In some ways it's a holdover from racier Victorian romances, in most of which the heroine is abducted/raped and decides she likes it. The word 'rape' is never actually used, nor is anything explicit written. Somehow, that makes it even more disturbing, since the abuse we are shown is almost entirely psychological.
I'm honestly bewildered as to how anyone could ever have found it romantic, then or now. The first half of the book largely details Diana's post-traumatic stress disorder, which is written so realistically it can make one wonder about the author's personal life experiences. It's literally almost one long litany of her mental and emotional torture at the hands of the Sheik, who's (rightly) portrayed as a Complete Monster. The shattering of her psyche the morning after her first rape is deeply, deeply disturbing; she has a full-blown panic attack at the thought of facing the bastard again. While the rape isn't shown, the psychological aftermath for her is horrifying.
And even a month later she's incredibly traumatized. We're shown this in excruciating detail, right up until her escape, and it's then that the novel really falls apart. Her so-called "change of heart" is obviously Stockholm Syndrome, which would be bad enough even if it wasn't portrayed as a good thing. When she's caught, she no longer continues to accept her physical and mental abuse, she enjoys it. The Sheik remains cruel to her right up until she's kidnapped by his rival, and then abruptly realizes hey, he's in love with her, too. So he rescues her, and then immediately decides he has to send her away, because he loves her too much to hurt her anymore. Which tells us he's sure he would, love or not; he's convinced that if he let her stay, she'd come to hate him in time, which is disturbing all on its own. He only does let her stay because she tries to blow her brains out, and even then tells her "You will have a devil for a husband." If that's not a warning he might still occasionally abuse her, I don't know what is. It's creepy as hell, yet it's portrayed as a "happily ever after" ending. It's a sick and twisted book, but we're not meant to see it as such. Reading this book literally left me feeling unclean.
Literature Extremely Uncomfortable
This really is a peculiar book. In some ways it's a holdover from racier Victorian romances, in most of which the heroine is abducted/raped and decides she likes it. The word 'rape' is never actually used, nor is anything explicit written. Somehow, that makes it even more disturbing, since the abuse we are shown is almost entirely psychological.
I'm honestly bewildered as to how anyone could ever have found it romantic, then or now. The first half of the book largely details Diana's post-traumatic stress disorder, which is written so realistically it can make one wonder about the author's personal life experiences. It's literally almost one long litany of her mental and emotional torture at the hands of the Sheik, who's (rightly) portrayed as a Complete Monster. The shattering of her psyche the morning after her first rape is deeply, deeply disturbing; she has a full-blown panic attack at the thought of facing the bastard again. While the rape isn't shown, the psychological aftermath for her is horrifying.
And even a month later she's incredibly traumatized. We're shown this in excruciating detail, right up until her escape, and it's then that the novel really falls apart. Her so-called "change of heart" is obviously Stockholm Syndrome, which would be bad enough even if it wasn't portrayed as a good thing. When she's caught, she no longer continues to accept her physical and mental abuse, she enjoys it. The Sheik remains cruel to her right up until she's kidnapped by his rival, and then abruptly realizes hey, he's in love with her, too. So he rescues her, and then immediately decides he has to send her away, because he loves her too much to hurt her anymore. Which tells us he's sure he would, love or not; he's convinced that if he let her stay, she'd come to hate him in time, which is disturbing all on its own. He only does let her stay because she tries to blow her brains out, and even then tells her "You will have a devil for a husband." If that's not a warning he might still occasionally abuse her, I don't know what is. It's creepy as hell, yet it's portrayed as a "happily ever after" ending. It's a sick and twisted book, but we're not meant to see it as such. Reading this book literally left me feeling unclean.