3 out of 4 stars
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Heartaches 2: Bad Boy Vibes is the second novel in the H. M. Irwing Heartaches trilogy. It leaps straight into the action with the male protagonist, Rafe having a fitful sleep. Female protagonist Anna is there to come to his aid and is depicted as a meek girl who would lose herself if it meant that Rafe could be safe. From the first page, readers could be forgiven for mistaking their relationship as a physically abusive one, especially after Anna's near-death experience at his hands, literally. The fact that she excuses his actions even at the point which she believes could be her last breath raises alarm bells for the reader.
Part of my anger towards Rafe and frustration towards Anna in the opening are as a direct result of not having the backstory that was created in the first novel. My emotions were stirred but not necessarily in a good way. I wanted to climb in the book and encourage the girl to give her head a wobble, tell her to get a grip and come to her senses. I immediately prejudged the book as being a potentially sadistic sexual fantasy novel. I hold my hands up. I was wrong. Reading further revealed subtle clues to Rafe being troubled and needing to mend ‘the splinters of [his] fractured soul.' Readers you have been warned, either start at book one or read closely with an open mind. Much of the important missed information is presented in chapter one.
The novel continues the romance saga between two Melbourne-based military students; Rafael Luis Brown and Anna Simmons, although Rafe also counts as staff. Both victims of rape at the hands of fellow students, they cling to each other for strength and support. Anna even goes as far as to describe them as ‘halves of the whole'. Throughout the story, we see them having to face their attackers repeatedly as they struggle to cope with, and overcome, their ordeals as best they can. Whilst I can appreciate their need and dependence on each other, I found their relationship suffocating and probably overly dependent on each other to the point of being an unhealthy co-dependence. Even in their temporary separation, they pined for each other, before being reunited and just as reliant on each other as before. As the story unfolds, it is good to see Anna take control at key moments and show signs of true strength, shattering the illusion that was created at the beginning of the book. It's a shame that Rafael, on the other hand, doesn't quite live up to expectation despite all the promises he makes Anna. I just get the feeling that she could survive without him if push came to shove, but that he couldn't live without her or someone in her place.
Irwing has a descriptive use of language, using phrases such as ‘duplicate orbs of melted chocolate,' ‘golden brown gaze,' ‘emeralds,' and ‘forest-green attention' to describe eyes. She uses external factors such as the weather and light of day to convey mood and memories. The great use of this device artfully paints vivid pictures in one's mind drawing us into the nightmare and the triumphs the characters endure. I really enjoyed this for the most part, but I felt it was overused and sometimes I would have appreciated her just saying, ‘green eyes'. By overusing the device, it became less effective over time and lost its appeal.
Another device that I really enjoyed was the series of questions Anna, in particular, would think to herself. I thought it revealed how uncertain she was of a lot of thoughts, feelings and situations, which suited her characterisation as a victim.
However, a not so successful device which probably had the same aim but wasn't as successful was the 694 instances of Rafe being called, mentioned or thought about which were found in the 149 pages that were dedicated to the story itself. I found it quite tedious and annoying, and it heightened my view of just how possessive the couple were over each other. The book didn't contain enough characters to merit that amount of signposting.
At about midway, the writer invoked an interesting twist that played out in a satisfying way. However, I felt the way it was introduced was a bit out of the blue and didn't quite fit with the telling of the story at the time. I concede that perhaps I may have needed to have read the first book to have understood the full impact of the scene but it still could have been tightened up a little.
Anna is a victim that would probably be hard for sexual abuse survivors to read about because of how blinded she is to her situation during the book. There are points where she clearly isn't ready to be saved because she hasn't realised there is a danger to be saved from. Equally, the turmoil both her and Rafe feel at the hands of their attackers is quite fresh, raw even.
The subject matter, bad language and often wordy sentences clearly mark this novel as one for adults. Both these items make the book difficult to read at times. I often found myself re-reading lengthy sentences to break them down so that I could understand them better. What could have been a book that took a few hours probably took double the time because of going back over missed text and trying to decipher the metaphors.
As short as the book was, there were times when I wondered whether the text could have been shortened further as it contained repetitive phrases. For example, early on we read, ‘The Harley sped on, unconcerned with the roughened landscape it was tearing over, leaving the roads to carve its own path through the sun-dried landscape. Navigating around the shrubs and rocks in the dried-up grasslands took some focus, providing Anna much relief from her normal worries. She cast a narrowed eye over the sporadic shrubs dispersed across the sun-baked horizon, bleached brown ahead of its time.' I'm not sure the dry ground needed to be punctuated so heavily in such a short space of time. Each description was lovely but it stalled the story which had more important matters to attend to.
I really struggled to decide on how to rate this novel and in the end I decided to rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I really enjoyed the language and wonderfully descriptive ways of describing things. It did make it hard to keep track at times but I really appreciated the extensive vocabulary and that the author wasn't afraid to flick through a thesaurus and experiment. There were a few mistakes in the grammar and inconsistencies with the story that slowed my reading progress and took away some of the pleasure. Overall, I feel the book lacked a high level of editing as many of the flaws should have been picked up before publication. I also didn't enjoy the story. I liked the concept and the high points, but I felt that it could have been told quicker to be more effective. I also felt that the book lacked a lot of romance and instead was about rape, lust, possession and standing up for oneself in unlikely ways. Had the book been a first novel, I may have been a little more forgiving of the flaws. But here's the thing that posed the greatest dilemma. The story got off to a great start, had a really slow second quarter, found an interesting plot twist, sped up only to slow down again and then punched me in the face with an absolute blinder of a twist I did not see coming, before ending abruptly with a ‘To Be Continued.' As much as I didn't like the story, there is this nagging need to know what happens next and I fear I may just have to grab myself a copy of the next segment.
I think this book will suit modern romance readers. It's not a Mills and Boon type affair where everything is wrapped up neatly and tied with a bow. You are left wondering whether there will be a happy ending and there is the inclusion of some steamy scenes of a highly sexual nature. It's the type of book one will either absolutely love or absolutely loathe. You decide.
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Heartaches 2
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