Tag Archives: Reader Rant

Team TBR Challenge Review/Rant: 暴君请放手 by 一抹初晴

2 Replies

暴君请放手 by 一抹初晴
(Tyrant, Please Let Go aka “Beauty’s Fault“) by Yi Mo Chu Qing
Beauty's Fault Hoopla Audiobook Cover

他擁有絕美的容顏，卻因此淪爲仇人的玩物；她爲報救母之恩，替他承歡於他的仇人身下。終有一天，她助他得以飛出囚籠，重獲新生。本以爲可以從此自由，誰料他殘忍下手，揮劍刺向她的胸膛。“怎麼，想離開我，回到他的身邊去？”他絕美的脣角掛着陰鷙的冷笑，長劍的劍尖上還淌着殷紅的血。他的劍，怎會刺進她的胸膛？這樣的結局，是她始料未及。他冷冷地指着她：“你逃不了！我不會放過他，也不會放過你！”
He has a beautiful face, but because of this he becomes the plaything of his enemies; in order to repay the favor to her mother, she acts his body double and makes nice with his captor on his behalf. One day, she helped him fly out of the cage and regain his life. She thought she could be free from now on, but who would have expected him to be so cruel that he stabbed her in the chest with his sword. “Why, do you want to leave me and go back to him?” There was a sinister sneer on the corner of his beautiful lips, and the tip of the long sword was dripping with red blood. How could his sword pierce her chest? This ending was something she had never expected. He pointed at her coldly: “You can’t escape! I won’t let him go, and I won’t let you go!”

First of all … I spent too much time hunting down the actual book blurb, and “translating” it – TBH I obviously used google translated and edited what it spit out … What it says in Hoopla is this:

“Canon grave” is based on Jiang Feng as the main line, wrote about the jiangs pawnshop in three hundred years throughout the country. The story took place in different times. The Jiangjia Pawnshop before liberation and the Jiangjia Pawnshop after liberation were staggered.

… which is obviously fucking wrong. Also I started listening to the book in my car so it’s not as if I could’ve tried to find the source material and plug it into a translator. Anyway I’m salty AF. Especially since all the [Chinese] sites I’ve found it on label it as a romance. A ROMANCE! NO!

While the prompt for the TBR challenge this month was “furry friends” I’m ignoring it because I need to rant. (Also I considered writing a review of a book I enjoyed that had a dog, but look … I need to talk about this goddamn book more.) Calling the … I don’t even want to call him a “male lead” – even in my notes I just called him “dude” other than my descriptive “13 year old shitprince” … anyway, calling him a dog would be an insult to dogs. And not just because I LOVE dogs. I felt insane while I was listening to this book. I didn’t DNF it because I’d DNF’d like eight books over the weekend – so many that I didn’t even bother putting them all into GR. I kept listening because the first part was ok, and more I kept hoping it’d get better. I kept thinking, “it has to get better, right? Everything is going to turn around.” Well, I WAS WRONG. I think this might be the most “what in the goddamn fuck” book I’ve ever read in my life. Continue reading →

Special Guest: Stacie! (Oh No They Didn’t!)

Leave a reply

It’s the third Saturday of the month! And that means we have a special reader guest, here to share her (or his, if/when that happens) thoughts about romance novels, or anything. Stacie’s here with a really interesting topic, so stick around! (Oh also? Stacie is freaking awesome she sent me this post way back in April. April 11, to be exact. We also scheduled this post in like :X January or February of 2011. I had to convince her to be a guest blogger. 😉 Although you might remember her from her 2011 RT Recap!)

Also, both Stacie and I would like to note, that the covers shared here are romances that don’t have thin bashing. They’re books Stacie enjoyed.

Oh No They Didn’t!

THUNK!

That was the sound of a trade paperback being thrown across the room. I don’t think I had ever done such a thing before. After all, a trade paperback isn’t cheap. But I did just that a few months ago.

Why would I do this?

Buckle up, Buttercup. I’m about to rant your pants off.

It is no secret that romances have historically had a problem with body shaming female characters. The majority of that body shaming has been targeted at overweight heroines. During the course of the story the unhappy/unloved/virgin character sheds her shameful pounds and ends up falling madly in love with her hero. Yes, she had to change her appearance to be worthy of the hero. This was very common in older romances.

In the past several years there have been many authors that wrote curvy heroines who were happy with themselves. The heroes who fell for these strong women loved them for their curves. This has been a wonderful way to empower a body type that had been vilified in the past.

Unfortunately, some authors emphasize the hero’s love for the voluptuous heroine by mentioning how disgusted he is by thin women. The words used to describe the thinner body type are almost always negative. Skinny, bony, anorexic (don’t get me started) are some of the adjectives used. The book that I launched across the room had a secondary hero that described thin women as “skeletons with skin.”

Full disclosure time. I am thin. VERY thin. I have body issues like any other woman. Probably more. Paying $15 for a romance that basically tells me I’m disgusting does not make me a happy camper. This isn’t the first time an author has made a crack about my body type but this instance was the most shocking.  It took several days before I could start reading the rest of the book (which I ended up enjoying BTW).

Thin shaming has become more common as the popularity of curvy heroines has grown.  Is it necessary? Do authors need to put thin women down in order to make curvy women better? Why can’t it be okay to be one or the other? Why is one good and the other bad? Authors, if you wouldn’t describe your curvy heroine as portly or rotund then why is it okay to describe the thin character as skinny or bony? All of those adjectives are insulting. You do realize that thin women read romance too, right? Why alienate part of your audience? Why not celebrate all body types?

I had an epiphany about a month ago. I had been on an m/m romance binge and I finally figured out why. I could read an m/m romance without having to keep my guard up. I wasn’t worried that I was going to read something hurtful.  How sad is that?

This is one of my pet peeves in romance lately. What are yours? What would make you so mad that you would turn your book into a projectile? Is there a topic that pushes your buttons?