Carole Mortimer, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-910597-91-0
Historical Romance, 2020
Carole Mortimer’s Wanton may be published in the 21st century, but it is old school at heart. It lives and breathes on the principal that the stronger he hates, the harder or wetter the genitalia of all parties involved get. Mind you, following Diana Fitzwilliam and Xavier Asherton smack and punch one another into an orgasm will be a less painful experience than following them attempt to love-hate one another into a happily ever after.
On the other hand, there is this.
Diana let out a screech that sounded more indignant than pained. “You bastard!”
“Tut, tut, my dear.” Xavier accompanied each word with another hard smack to those delectable mounds, smiling his satisfaction as they began to glow a deep rose.
Diana struggled to escape those punishing smacks but failed to make purchase. “Fucking bastard!”
“Dear, dear, dear,” Xavier mused. “Your language truly is deplorable.”
I didn’t know the author is such a comedian!
Xavier hates Diana. She was, as he and the rest of Polite Society believe, his brother’s mistress and she killed him by giving him the death by snu-snu treatment. Of course, as much as he hates her, he also writhes in agonizing desire as he imagines his brother over her, heaving and churning and twerking between her thighs as he… uh… oh yes, he hates her, he hates her, he hates her. Likewise, she hates him because he’s a cold-hearted bastard so they waste little time gnashing their teeth and then throwing themselves at one another.
I wish there is more to this, but I’ve basically described the entire story.
Oh, and of course Diana will never do that snu-snu thing on anyone. In fact, she wasn’t even her husband’s snu-snu pillow, because she’s such a boring old cliché that way. The author goes out of her way to make the hero a rampaging neanderthal that thinks with his small head, but heaven forbid the heroine is as lusty as the hero. No, the heroine must be pure and just lay back and receive the rogering, like all good romance heroines would. Snore.
Wanton is a completely inappropriate title for this one, but I suppose folks feeling nostalgic for stories by the likes of Connie Mason and other old-school authors of love-hate-HATE romances may find some enjoyment out of this one. Me, I just wish there is more to this than a superficial so-called romance that has the hero magically revising his opinion of the heroine only because she ends up passing some kind of eye-rolling purity test.
Still, I will always have that spanking scene…
