TEST
What term does one use for what happens when a man forces himself upon a woman who mentally doesn’t want to have physical relations with him but her body physically responds in the affirmative and so they have non-romantic sex? In the past, I think we called this scenario forced seduction. If that still applies, then I think I have to warn you that Sherilee Gray’s Shattered King: A Lawless Kings Novel contains forced seduction. Or something like that.
Lucinda “Lulu” Carson/Frost (I never was sure of her last name) lied in the most horrible way there is to lie. In order to protect him from her vicious, evil stepfather, Lulu implicated the love of her life, Hunter King, in arson and got the man sentenced to three years in prison. Letting Hunter believe that her love for him was all a calculated act, she bolted the scene and went on the run, along the way bearing a son that may (or may not) be Hunter’s. Only the imminent death of her beloved mother could bring Lulu out of hiding. She returns home, leaves two-year old Josh with her aunt and visits her mom in the hospice, terrified that either Hunter or her stepfather, Pierce, will find her but honestly not sure which case would be worse.
Hunter King is out of prison and on a mission of revenge. Lulu, the cold-hearted bitch who had thoroughly fooled him into believing that she’d actually cared about him, is going to pay the price for her lies. With the help of his co-workers, a motley group of ex-military types whose company undertakes work that runs the gamut between legal PI stuff and maybe not-legal ‘intimidation’, he easily captures Lulu and holds her prisoner, determined to get her to admit that she was evil incarnate who destroyed his life out of loyalty to her scumbag stepfather. He also wants to know where Pierce is hiding so that he can extract the balance of his rage-fueled vengeance on the man. Hunter is surprised that Lulu claims not to know where her stepfather is but figures she’s a lying liar who is just lying now.
What neither Lulu nor Hunter expect to discover is that although Hunter hates Lulu with the intensity of a thousand white-hot suns and Lulu is consumed with keeping her young son safe from her stepfather, the physical attraction between them has not diminished one micron. Hunter’s certainty of Lulu’s guilt begins to waver when he realizes that her fear of being turned over to Pierce is not fake. When she is brutally attacked and the real truth behind her actions comes out, Hunter realizes that his own willingness to immediately condemn Lulu says more about his personal failings than it does about her. He determines to protect his woman and the son he never knew existed, even as Lulu pulls away.
So.
I’m guessing that this story will be a love it/hate it book for most people. It contains a lot of clichés that some people consider a guilty pleasure – the sort of thing one would never condone in real life but is fine in fantasy – but just as many readers will find thoroughly off-putting.
Let’s start with the fact that Hunter kidnaps Lulu and holds her against her will for several days. During that time, he can’t help himself from taking advantage of the fact that his penis doesn’t seem to hate her as much as his brain does. For her part, Lulu feels only humiliation and disgust at herself for letting Hunter use her body, but she wants him so badly she can’t even pretend to object. Using today’s definitions, what Hunter does amounts to rape, but in the spirit in which I believe it was written, we’ll call it forced seduction. However, later in the book he definitely shows some traits that cross the line from protective to controlling and potentially abusive when Lulu fails to obey his commands. If you are offended by profanity, be warned that Hunter drops the F-bomb practically once a paragraph.
After Lulu clears the air and Hunter fully understands the pure hell she’s endured and what had led her to lie and put him in prison, the obstacles between them shift from the Big Misunderstanding to Lulu’s determination that she can’t stay with Hunter because reasons. She doesn’t like that Hunter is not a fully stand-up guy and hasn’t severed his connections with a shady past, so fears for her own and Josh’s safety. She doesn’t think it’s smart for her to become emotionally reliant on anyone and fears that Hunter will come to resent raising a child that might not be biologically his. She might lose Hunter because his job is so dangerous and she couldn’t survive that tragedy. Yada yada excuses. When she pulls some serious too-stupid-to-live moves due to her inability to come to grips, I wanted to throw the book at the wall.
Lulu’s stepfather, Pierce, is evil in pretty much every way there is to be evil. There aren’t any scenes where he kills puppies or anything, but I wouldn’t put it past him. There isn’t much more to say except that he exists as a cartoon pretty much so that Lulu can suffer at his hands and Hunter can suffer guilt over Lulu’s suffering and thus vow to kill the guy to demonstrate his emotional turmoil.
What this book does brilliantly is set up a handful of hard-ass guys ripe for sequels.
I’ve given Shattered King a middling-C grade, even though it contains some pretty serious character transgressions, principally because anyone who generally enjoys the hurt/comfort trope will find a decently written example of it here. If, however, you think that kidnapping and forced seduction are pretty much irredeemable qualities for a hero, you will probably want to take a hard pass. Throw in the fact that the heroine is clearly suffering from multiple emotional and psychological traumas that she refuses to acknowledge or seek help for and you may decide that this one is simply too un-PC for you.
Buy Now: A/BN/iB/K
Grade: C-
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 06/07/17
Publication Date: 06/2017
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm a city-fied suburban hockey mom who owns more books than I will probably ever manage to read in my lifetime, but I'm determined to try.
Related Reviews
Wow. This one sounds so full of “Nope” that I’m going to have to buy it! :)
Go for it! It’s decently written, and if the idea of the hero kidnapping the heroine for a while and forcing himself on her – she doesn’t really say NO, though – doesn’t bother you, you will probably like it well enough. One thing that I didn’t mention in my review that did bet to me: for the longest time, Lulu refuses to tell Hunter the truth of the situation. She lets him keep believing that she was an evil bitch, and often I wanted to just shake her and tell her to just spill it all already. It’s kind of an extended intentional Big Misunderstanding on steroids.
For some reason, that makes it sound even better to me. More annoying, yet better. And now you have me picturing a muscular supervillain named The Big Mis who creates confusion wherever he goes. And of course he wears the initials BM on his costume…