Review: Tempt Me at Twilight

Tempt Me at Twilight by Lisa Kleypas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


To be frank, I ought not to be reading romance novels at all if I intend to apply the civil standards of gender equality to their nauseatingly sexist plots. Lisa Kleypas's books are, frankly, guilty fantasies of ravishment and a loss of control. I, like many, read these books because the idea of being swept into an exciting, passionate romance that's out of my hands sounds delightfully dangerous. And we guilty readers get that, so we hide these books on our kindles or in the backs of our bookshelves, hoping nobody ever asks why on earth an English major has such a trashy drugstore novel in her collection.

But I'm still annoyed at Mister Rutledge's arrogant meddling in the life of Miss Poppy Hathaway. I've read reviews that call Tempt Me at Twilight the most romantic of the Hathaway series so far. I must fervently disagree.

Despite the happy ending, in which Poppy submits to Mister Harry Rutledge's love with a blindness that resembles Stockholm syndrome, she is deprived of a chance to ever achieve love of her own agency. While the hopelessness of her relationship with Michael Bayning does imply that Poppy would otherwise have become a spinster, sans Harry's infernal intrusion, I cannot agree with the hotelier's defense that the ends of his actions justified the means. I personally cannot agree that a relationship with a dishonest start can ever fully attain equilibrium - Rutledge will always have the upper hand in this relationship, and Poppy will always be dragged along, assuring herself that things could probably work out some time.

Is mutuality so unsexy?

Luckily, as always, Lisa Kleypas's more, er, intimate scenes stayed within the bounds of what I would consider to follow acceptable consent. Always ravishment, and never rape.



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