Helpful Score: 3
This book had promise: a smart, resourceful heroine who refused to live by society's rules. A heroine who was actually poor! Well, as it turns out, after she gets rich she kinda likes society. Especially the sparkly parts. And she's just naturally good at everything! Who would have thought?! Worse yet, the hero and heroine (I use those terms loosely) fight constantly and treat each other like crap. Frankly, I didn't care whether they ended up together in the end. But the awful cherry on this terrible sundae is all the domestic abuse. He slaps her around and thinks about strangling her almost constantly. And then he rapes her - oh, sorry, we call it "ravishing"...which somehow makes sex-by-force romantic and not a terrible crime? My favorite bits come at the end, when other female characters reflect that they wouldn't respect their men if they didn't get smacked around a little (HA!) and the heroine realizes she wouldn't find him so attractive if he wasn't such a raging d-bag. The writing is sloppy, the characters are insufferable and the story is 500 pages of GIVEMEABREAK. Save yourself some time and skip this awful book.
