- #1
Let me summarize the events first: Tessa's castle (the Marquisate of Jutert) is invaded by an unknown aggressor, which Tessa quickly realizes is her old childhood friend Hert who she was tricked into selling into s*avery (lol). He drags her by the hair, roughs her up, and then gropes her and pulls his engorged g**italia out to have s*x with her but she objects and he relents. Afterward, Tessa regrets objecting to the s*xual assault because she has a masochistic desire for punishment because she blames herself for Hert's ens*avement. (We're going to set aside whether this deranged train of thought counts as "consent".) Hert calls for Tessa the next day, and feeling that she can't object, she goes to him despite being feverish. During the encounter, she starts trying to take off Hert's pants to perform fellatio on him as she assumes that's why she has been called. Fellatio is a task she was periodically made to perform on her dead husband Marquis Jutert (despite his smelly, shrunken old d*ck - the author REALLY wants you to be impressed with the size, smell and youth of Hert's dong lmfao). Hert decides to accept and the fellatio is performed. (Thus far, I think this is dubiously consensual. Hert has threatened her physically and sexually; she's not in her right mind; she's also being emotionally blackmailed into pity s*x.) However, Hert then drags Tessa up onto the desk and starts groping at her c*otch because he isn't satisfied. Tessa trembles with fear, as she has never been penetrated before, but keeps quiet while resolving to let him punish her via s*x (this is yellow light territory if not a full red - verbal consent to fellatio =/= verbal consent to penetration). Hert goes forward in attempting penetration without checking in with Tessa, who is immediately in intense pain and begs him to stop. He is enraged at her rejection and purposefully ignores her verbal pleas and attempts to physically escape while forcing himself on her. This is very unambiguously r*pe. Stop means stop, no means no, people desperately clawing their way out of your grasp does not count as "enthusiasm", etc etc etc.
TBQH, the smut is neither hot nor interesting enough to tempt me to go back in and document every nonconsensual interaction. Tessa states that her feverish state saved her from the worst of the pain and their second attempt at penetration was even more painful. Hert also thinks to himself that he purposefully tried to make their s*xual encounters as degrading and uncomfortable as possible for at least the first week or so of their reunion, and Tessa ends up needing medical treatment for her vulva and a break to physically recover from Hert's s*xual ab*se.
Hert will go on to consistently treat Tessa's rejections and verbalizations during s*x as immaterial for the rest of the story.
[collapse]Every s*x scene throughout the novel is written to feel like r*pe, even when it shies away from explicit r*pe. Hert is extremely aggressive; Tessa is reluctant and crying; there are long descriptions of how physically uncomfortable the s*x is for Tessa; Tessa never seems enthused about s*x and has to be strong-armed into it; etc. These descriptions will feel familiar to anyone whose read even a small amount of smut, because catering to a r*pe fetish is actually more common than depictions of fully consensual & enthusiastic interc**rse. Them's the breaks and I'm not here to write off any story (or even smut) that uses r*pe as subject matter. I've read very effective stories about r*pe that DON'T try to pretend the rapist is noble, DON'T write off r*pe as a "misunderstanding", and DON'T present ab*se as "misguided love". Like with so many other stories with so-called regretful MLs, the author didn't have the guts to commit to the edgy premise and collapsed back into simpering, saccharine "but he didn't mean it : ( ((" dreck.The story drifts along with Hert slowly piecing together that Tessa is not, in fact, an opulent, devilish vixen twisting him around her little finger along with countless other men from such subtle cues as: the huge and impossible to miss scars on her back from the many beatings the Marquis's son gave her, her cast-off peasant clothes, her emotional instability and obvious fear, her general inability to form a sentence without severely stuttering and/or apologizing, and other things that a day's acquaintance should've made obvious. (Worry not, Hert never grows a functioning brain cell.) I did, however, kind of like this bit because Hert was letting go of his resentment because of his empathy for Tessa instead of lazy "it was just a misunderstanding, whoopsies!" bullshit. It made his affection feel much more real to make him forgive & want a future with Tessa despite what she'd done (in his eyes). It made me yearn for a version of the novel where Tessa really did betray Hert, which would've given some desperately needed depth to her one-note crybaby characterization and fixed numerous other problems (her refusal to explain herself being a glaring one; another being that in Hert's recollection, we're told Tessa used to be clever before ab*se broke her. So clever she stole his fingerprint for a contract she couldn't read? 🥴) Well, the plot isn't honestly very good but it's improved by the mounting political tension in the background. We get acquainted with Marquis Borwen, Hert's benefactor who saved him from the gladiatorial ring, her sister Jean Borwen who is currently Queen, and her enemy Duke Callias who is eyeing the throne. It looks promising... ish... actually, Marquis Borwen and her sister seem to be hateful psychopaths who I honestly expected to be the end-game villains before I realized this story has no moral compass or grasp of tone and expected me to be impressed with Marquis Borwen's ~girlboss antics~ instead of disgusted with her mercenary & unfeeling attitude that selfishly disregards the suffering of others. But those problems weren't as prevalent pre-chapter 70 and it was shaping up to be a smooth, if average 2-3 star read. Deduct a star for the refusal to acknowledge or address the r*pe at the beginning, and it's still at least a 2 star rating. If only I had quit before chapter 70...I want to describe the kidnapping incident that occurs around ch70-80, which is so s*upidly convoluted for no reason that we never even get an explanation for why the perpetrators did what they did, but because it's so f*cking s*upid and convoluted I don't even want to try. More in the spoiler, but the TL;DR is that this one event made me so angry I skimmed the rest of the novel just to find the moment where Hert grovels for his actions, and ended up finishing the novel. Yeah, that moment never comes. f*ck this novel lmaooooooSpoilerSo, the event goes like this:
Tessa is getting ready to say goodbye to her friend Janet, who is secretly a spy for Marquis Borwen (Hert's benefactor) and also faking a pregnancy (it's never explained why she faked a pregnancy). Tessa practices writing a farewell letter to Janet (she has been receiving literacy lessons from Marchioness Elena Jutert, the first wife of her dead husband). We find out outside of Tessa's POV that Janet is leaving ahead of schedule that night and the Marchioness is plotting something. We also learn that Hert has discovered Tessa's jewelry is being sold on the market and he weighs whether someone is stealing or Tessa is selling the jewelry herself, and decides to go see her. Tessa hears that Hert is coming and changes clothes because she got ink on herself while practicing writing. Marnie, her trusted maid, offers to burn the practice letters and Tessa accepts while thinking that she should seek the Marchioness's help the next day in writing the letter. She asks Marnie what gift to give and Marnie responds "money", then apologizes and acts fidgety and distracted. Tessa recalls that Marnie has been disappearing from work recently and she once caught her coming out of Hert's room. She thinks about asking Marnie about her suspicious behavior but then reasons that she, Tessa, is a useless person who can't help anyone and lets it go. (This thought process doesn't make sense to me either, idk) Tessa seriously considers gifting Janet money for some reason before remembering that she has no money, is too embarrassed to ask Hert for money, and briefly considers selling her jewelry before deciding against it, because she doesn't feel it really belongs to her (Hert paid for it). Hert arrives, and they share an overwraught, emotional conversation. He considers asking her whether she is selling her jewelry (as opposed to someone stealing it) but then doesn't because he's afraid she'll say yes... because then she might be saving money to run away... and he would prefer not to know that, even though he would need to know in order to stop it. And for some reason, he's fine with the possibility of a servant pilfering the jewelry he gave her. (It's hard for me to describe these characters' thoughts when they literally make no sense but I honestly tried.) Anyway, Tessa finally decides to tell Hert about the misunderstanding from 7 years ago (in which he thinks she tricked him into s*avery to become a noble, but actually they were both tricked and sold). Hert says she doesn't need to say it now, she can say it "when he gets back" (I'm rolling my eyes from how obvious the writing is, ugh) as long as she promises not to leave. Tessa goes back to her room and practices writing farewell letters to Janet while waiting for Hert to get back from his task.
Marnie (btw the translation switches to Mani at some point for inscrutable reasons, but I prefer Marnie) tells Tessa that Hert has been injured and she needs to come with her, and Tessa very gullibly follows Marnie through the door connecting her bedroom to Hert's bedroom, which is not being surveilled, into a secret passage in Hert's bedroom, and follows her for some time through the secret passage before realizing something is wrong and Marnie is hurting her, and then follows her some more until the passageway ends. God, this novel is killing my braincells.
We find out through omniscient POV that Janet is coincidentally leaving at the same time, and the Marchioness is surveying Tessa being kidnapped while feeling sorry for someone (possibly Tessa, possibly Janet? it's never clarified). She holds up a card from Marquis Beatrice Borwen that reveals her maiden name is also Borwen - she is Beatrice's aunt - and they have cut a deal of some kind. It's also insinuated she's doing this to curry favor with Hert. (We find out from Hert's perspective that the Marchioness warned him of the "danger" of Janet, i.e. that Tessa might try to run away with Janet.)
Tessa is drugged (seemingly with chloroform, though idk how these medieval dudes got that) and carried off in a wagon. When she wakes, Marnie begs for forgiveness while saying her family was threatened and cuts Tessa free while "holding off" the kidnappers (this makes no sense because the kidnappers seem to have vanished but Tessa is s*upid and so am I for reading this). Tessa runs away in the pitch black night, thankfully in the intended direction of this convoluted scheme as she runs into Janet. Janet drags her along without asking questions or giving explanations and stuffs Tessa in her runaway carriage without even asking where Tessa is going, why she is here, or if she even wants to be on this dumb runaway carriage. Unbelievably, this is not because Janet is in on it, but rather because she's also very dumb. Tessa starts to explain herself on the carriage but is interrupted by Hert's absurdly convenient timing. (He has, btw, found a practice farewell letter to Janet that conveniently has no identifying information on it and interpreted it as a very haphazard and incoherent goodbye letter to himself. And ofc the other letters have been burnt.) Tessa has been caught running away, oh no. 😑
Tessa is locked in her room. Improbably, Marnie comes in and starts rambling about how she stole jewelry but she didn't mean to blah blah blah and Tessa believes it all. Hert interrupts this nonsense, demands to know why Marnie was let in the room (the Marchioness ordered it - he doesn't follow this up), and then gets angry on the assumption that they're scheming to run away again (even though Marnie wasn't even in the runaway carriage? It's not even explained how she got back to the castle). Anyway, Hert is now furious: he becomes extremely verbally abusive; he screams questions at Tessa then interrupts her before she can say anything; when she manages to stutter a reply, he accuses her of being a liar; then he claims her answer doesn't matter anyway and he was a fool to trust her, etc. Tessa sobs and begs him not to hurt Janet or Marnie, which he gets offended by for no reason (he has thrown Janet in the dungeon and had Marnie dragged away, and threatened to interrogate both of them multiple times to Tessa???). Anyway the conversation goes nowhere because Hert is an egregious c*nt and it culminates in him forcing more uncomfortable s*x on her in what, for me, was by far the absolute worst s*x scene of the novel. Yeah, nothing gets me hot like annoying and unjust accusations + verbal, emotional, & physical ab*se. f*ck this novel.
This event is where the "Wasn’t this not pure s*upidity?" quote comes from. Hert is berating himself for the s*upidity of trusting Tessa while actually falling for the s*upidest, most looney tunes ass frame-up ever conceived. I'm not going to address how s*upid this framejob is on its face. Tessa is all scraped up from the manhandling, she's not dressed to run away, she doesn't have any of the money from selling the jewelry, and there are 3 other witnesses in the carriage that can attest Tessa wasn't supposed to be there, the secret passageway presumably still exists and can be pointed to (for some reason, how Tessa was never seen being dragged off is one of Hert's objections and despite easily being demonstrated, it never is), and countless other things can point to Tessa's innocence. None of it matters, though, because Hert would rather cling to his loathesome self-pity than listen to the woman he "loves". This was really the point where it felt very definitively like Hert only saw Tessa as a convenient fleshlight. He doesn't know her; he doesn't want to know her; he prefers to believe that she's a duplicitious person so he can justify using her sexually however he wants, even though it doesn't even justify it, because Tessa should be able to leave if she wants to anyway. He should be trying to make her want to stay, not screaming at her like a child throwing a tantrum. Everything about this event is overdramatic and hateful in the extreme. (Tessa confesses that she was tricked 7 years ago with predictably poor timing and Hert just flat-out calls her a liar. 🙄) It makes so many characters (Hert, Marnie, the Marchioness) into unlikable, disgusting people.
The biggest problem is that it makes no sense for anyone to do this. We later find out the Marchioness wants revenge on the Marquisate of Jutert and blows up the castle. None of this is served by her faking Tessa's escape. As for Marnie, she's allowed to continue serving Tessa because both Tessa and Hert are just the f*cking dumbest rocks on the planet. Her involvement casts no suspicion on the Marchioness even though it should. Janet has to continue to be unjustly imprisoned until the castle gets blown up because Hert is an ass. None of this is ever sorted out. Hert never has to apologize for his appalling behavior. THE WHOLE EPISODE WAS POINTLESS AND MADE NO SENSE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
[collapse]From this point on, the novel only gets worse. Hert treats Tessa like sh*t - locking her in her room and even shackling her ankles, which triggers her memories of being forced into solitary confinement, not that Hert would care! He's not a yandere, by the way. The one trait all yanderes have is that they're ruthless to anyone who keeps them from their beloved, but when it's revealed to him that Marquis Borwen hid Tessa from him for 2 years, he just chuckles and comments he never wants to deal with that woman again, which is the only thing he ever thinks or says about Marquis Borwen. "One-dimensional" doesn't even begin to describe what a vacant & empty character Hert Shine is. (Another crucial note: Marquis Borwen expends a great deal of effort hiding the fact that Tessa was innocent from Hert. It's never explained why she did this and she never faces any consequences for her complicity in Tessa's ab*se at the hands of the Marquisate as well as Hert himself. But at least she's a girlboss who killed her brothers, her father, the king, and anyone else inconvenient, right? It's cool when girls do it instead of evil and vile, right??) The shitty Marchioness drugs Tessa using lemon tart into becoming pregnant around chapter 100, which horrifies her and she begs for abortive medicine which she doesn't get, and we're supposed to see this as a "favor" the Marchioness did her. Oh my god what the f*ck is wrong with this author. Later, when the castle is falling apart and Tessa is about to commit su*cide in no small part due to all the sh*t the Marchioness piled on her head, the Marchioness shows up out of nowhere and gives an ~inspirational~ speech about she never gave up on her revenge after her legs were crushed that comes off more ghoulish than anything else. This story's moral center is whack.The castle is blown up for the Marchioness's petty, selfish revenge (we are never told the means by which these medieval people made a stone castle collapse. I'm not even laughing anymore, this is just embarrassing) but then Duke Callias sends an assassin to kill Hert. Tessa takes the arrow for Hert and at this point, >110 chapters in, a priest shows up out of nowhere with divine power and heals her. Apparently this was a romance fantasy???? WHERE'S THE REST OF THE MAGIC POWERS. WHY DID THIS ONLY SHOW UP NOW. WHY DIDN'T THE MARCHIONESS JUST GET A PRIEST TO HEAL HER CRUSHED LEGS. f*ck*deep breaths* okay. Anyway. Tessa goes into a coma. There's an incredibly long dream sequence that I didn't read because it doesn't matter and is boring schlock wherein she dreams of a world where Hert isn't a boorish ab*ser. Meanwhile, the real Hert becomes the next Duke Callias because apparently he's the Duke's illegitimate child because girlboss Marquis Borwen said so and she's never wrong (there's also an extremely cringey bit where she confronts Duke Callias by accusing him of crimes and bragging about how cool and smart she is and how lame and s*upid he is for opposing her. 12 year old kids, eat your heart out 😒).There's a hastily written regret sequence where Hert finally finds out that Tessa didn't betray him 7 years ago. It's extremely unsatisfying. As another reviewer put it, the characters are one-dimensional, never change, and learn nothing. Tessa wakes up, the end.***Go read Under the Oak Tree. It does everything right that this story does wrong and the smut is actually hot.