1 out of 4 stars
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Heartaches: Bad Boy Vibes is a romance novel written by H.M. Irwing. Set in the suburbs of Melbourne, Irwing writes about eighteen-year-old Anna who finally feels free to enjoy her life after her abusive stepfather dies and her equally abusive stepbrother is out of the picture. She has a new boyfriend and is feeling better than she has in years, until she is once again betrayed by an unlikely source.
Rafael is an ex-soldier who has recently been released from the army and returns home to live with his aunt. He is having a hard time adjusting to a normal life again, memories of his own abusive past plague him. These memories are quickly replaced by a new evil that has come into his life, and Rafe is hell-bent on settling the score. Can Anna and Rafe overcome their pasts? Perhaps they are exactly what the other needs most.
This novel is billed mainly as a romance but I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. The first half or so of the novel focuses mainly on an assault that takes place against Anna. She is drugged and forced into a situation where she is repeatedly raped in brutal detail. As someone who has read my fair share of graphic scenes throughout the years and don't consider myself squeamish, I was incredibly uncomfortable. The main problem with this overly long and drawn out scene is that it's written in a way that portrays Anna as enjoying herself. It's written as any other erotic scene in a romance novel would be, as if the reader is supposed to forget that this is being done against her will. When Anna later recalls the things done to her, the author describes it as erotic and uses other similarly positive terms. It's later revealed as part of the plot that Anna isn't believed about the assault because she never said no and she seemingly enjoyed it. I can see what the author is trying to do with this storyline, but it just didn't work for me. I found the whole thing to be in such poor taste that I questioned abandoning the book altogether.
There is an abundance of editing issues throughout the length of the book. The book is written in the third person but at one point accidentally slips into first person point of view. The word "pellet" is often used to describe a bed made up on the floor instead of pallet. One paragraph in particular had the mistaken use of pellet in it as well as the term "leather of sweat". Even Rafael's own name is misspelled once. There are also timeline mistakes and plot holes that made the book confusing at times. There is a major plot twist that is mentioned only once at the very beginning of the book but then never again. This reveal should have been a major theme carried throughout the book.
The constant abuse that Anna endures is honestly hard to stomach. Aside from the assault that takes place at the beginning, she also suffers from regular bullying at school. Later on in the book after she has made new friends at her new school, she describes them as her "family" after all they have been through together. But even they make derogatory comments towards her by calling her a fatty and talking crudely about her breasts. Once Anna and Rafe are finally together and he has helped her move on from her past, they have a love scene where he paddles her to the point that she is sobbing. This man who is supposed to be the love of her life and has been her rock through the whole ordeal ends up using sex to punish her. I kept waiting and hoping for the point in the story where Anna would stand up for herself and leave all of these people behind, but it never happened. The problem is that it's not even written in a tone that implies that any of this behavior is problematic. The author has a responsibility to call out all of the abusive behavior in the book, not just the ones where it serves to move the plot along while ignoring the rest.
I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars for all of the obvious reasons above. The fact that the book desperately needs more editing is only the tip of the iceberg. I cannot recommend a book that glamorizes assault to anyone.
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Heartaches
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