Living Dangerously by Katie FfordeMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
1.5 stars
The 1996 publishing date was strongly felt here. It's wild how technological advances in just my lifetime make 1996 seems like another world. Writing phone numbers down on piece of paper and exchanging them, asking the bartender for the phone to ring up a cab, asking for an ash tray in a cafe, and not answering the phone because you think it's your mom but you don't know who it is.
Really takes you back.
Also, mainly, this story made me want to buy an older generational woman a cup of tea or coffee and makes me sad again that I wasn't older/mature enough to give my grandma maybe a little more grace before she died. The way fear around men was prevalent in this and used in a way that the male main character was obviously showcased as a good man because all those times "he looked like he wanted to hit her" he didn't do it. The physical abuse threat hovering, lurking around in this was stomach churning, the MMC make-up is set to never to do but ugh, the threat in the wind with the female main character thinking it quite a lot. Not an older pub I'd suggest worthy of a revisit.
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The blurb reads very much "women's fiction" for me, and the focus on the threat of violence (domestic or otherwise) against women, would make this an unlikely pick up for me under any circumstances.
ReplyDeleteSome novels don't hold up well because they're a bit too close to reality.
Very women's fiction mashup, I just hated how it was used as a way to make him look like such a nice guy. That should be standard??? No hero points for not hitting a woman, my god.
DeleteThere was a time--not that long ago, gog help us all--when this was very much the norm for 'heroic' in genre romance: they don't beat their wives and/or children. Everything else was a non-issue. Autocratic asshole? oh well, something something he just cares about her wellbeing/safety. But he doesn't hit her, therefore heroic!
Delete(And don't get me started on, "he made her come, therefore it wasn't rape" version of non-con consent)
The amount of slaps the mmcs gave the fmcs to "settle them down"! Ugh.
DeleteYeah, the dream like stage the fmcs went into as they first said no, and then their "bodies betrayed" them as the mmc seduced them the way the mmcs just knew they wanted. Since I still read Bodice Rippers occasionally I'll still get hit with that. At least we can see growth of female agency, were we've been and what we've accomplished and all that.