LoveSpell, $5.99, ISBN 0-505-52343-4
Historical Romance, 1999 (Reissue)

I know Caress and Conquer is bad.

I thought this book would be bad in a lurid fun way.

Alas, this book is bad. How bad? I rather have multiple anginas kill me than having to sit through this book again. On page 25, my ears are ringing. On page 200, I see my life flash before my eyes. I’m sure I will sleep at night and wake up screaming because I will hear a disembodied voice reading out choice excerpts of this book in my head.

I mean, come on, Connie Mason is a bad author, yes. But she has her moments. But this… this… this one is sheer bad, so bad that it makes Rosemary Rogers and Cassie Edwards look like joint Pulitzer Prize winners. It makes a drunk chimpanzee look good.

Lovely, sweet, virginal Amanda Prescott is minding her own sweet, brainsucked ways, you know, doing chores for a sick momma and getting mistreated by everybody, when she is kidnapped by Tony Brandt’s friends and presented to the man as a bye-bye gift. Amanda gets raped twice – I stop counting after two for a long drink of whiskey – before being thrown back out on the streets, with payment, of course.

That was then. Today, Tony is a wealthy plantation estate owner having skanky sex with his mistress Letty. Amanda, meanwhile, is ruined, apparently, her hymenal perforation the catalyst of her mother’s death and her own indenture. Tony buys her, manhandles her, rapes her, smacks her left and right – yes, you read that right – and she loves him! Letty, so jealous, lures dumb Tony away and has Amanda raped some more. Tony comes back, Amanda flees, they marry, and move back to England. There, Letty blackmails Tony into sleeping with her. Amanda finds out, Tony would have willingly sacrificed his much-abused donkey kong stick some more in the name of love if Letty didn’t get deus ex machina’ed, and I take a broomstick and WHACKWHACKWHACK this evil book until my hands ache.

Tony is beyond offensive. He is just plain psycho and cheap and a complete, sickening male slut. And for a man who can smack his bitch Amanda up and down, he just have to oh-so-sadly cave in to Letty’s demands for skanky sex at the last few chapters. I see VENEREAL DISEASE shining like neon lights across my eyes. Rape, abuse, corny one-liners, you name, this man does it.

Then the author has to cheek to castigate Letty for being a slut because (a) she doesn’t get raped, she enjoys sex, how nasty, and (b) she has an abortion. What a bitch huh? Damn, if only Letty can be like Amanda! Let’s see how we women can emulate the lovely Amanda’s virtuous ways: when he hits you, you love him so it’s okay; when he rapes you, it’s okay too; after he rapes you, you pine after him. A woman who conspires for Amanda to be raped is evil, sure, but at least Letty can think, you know. She has some brain power. Amanda, on the other hand, is beyond braindead.

To round off this pure ride through hell, there is a nice sweet man who loves Amanda, but Amanda, you know, she’s stupid that way. Not stupid, maybe the correct word is “brain damaged”.

Hoo boy, take a ride on this Mason train straight down to the infernal hells of stupidity at your own risk. If you slash your wrists, develop an alcoholic problem, get a heart attack, and suffer from relentless purging, it’s your own fault.

Now, anyone knows of a good brand of paper shredder than can produce screams of agony that seem to come from the book when I happily pop this book through it?