Christina wants to be a knight but she is the daughter of Lord Michael, Earl of Gladsbury. Her father wants her to dress and behave as a girl. He has a plan but Christiana is not happy with it. Arriving to joust at Gladsbury is Rowan, the fifth son of a Normany lord. He pledges his allegiance to Lord Michael but his heart belongs to a woman in Normandy. Guy DeBere, a knight who saved Sir Michae's life in the Crusades, wants to marry Christiana. Chistiana does not want to get married. What is she to do?

I enjoyed this story. I did not think I would but I could not put it down. Christiana is feisty and has a mind of her own. Rowan is at a loss as to what to do. He has been besotted for years with Diantha but does not have enough money to provide a house for her. Now he is attracted to Christiana. When Christiana runs away, Rowan goes hunting for her and they come to an understanding. I liked their solution as well as her father's.

The medieval period comes through very well. I felt I was back in that time period. This is worth reading. I also have seen a few more books by Carolina Valdez that I want to read.

Stockholm syndrome: noun
'feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.'


I will present you all with a few quotes from the book and then I will try to give my hopefully short opinion because my brain is already bleeding enough.


"He'd opened his mouth before acknowledging that he didn't want to talk to her. She was female and he male. Nothing else mattered."

"He'd force her down, envelope her, show her who her master was."

"She was his to punish or not, depending on his mood, and at this moment the only thing he wanted was for her to understand he was in charge."

""You will do what I command," he said. "What happens between us is for my pleasure, not yours. And if you can’t comprehend that—" He crouched so he could more easily strike her defenseless buttocks. "I’ll punish you until you do.""

"Besides, she was a piece of merchandise, gift wrapped for him."

"He only wanted a resting place for his cock. A willing one, his human half insisted. It doesn't matter, Puma returned."

"He’d take advantage of that, bring her down to his level. Going by instinct, he struck her ass as hard as he could do given the awkward angle. She shuddered and struggled to get free."

"The possibility stopped him from massaging her surely sore ass. No way would he allow her to think she was in control. He was! Even though he wasn’t sure what had prompted his anger, he started punishing her again and again. His breathing quickened and deepened with the renewed blows. This was good, perfect, a helpless creature delivered to him."

""You brought this on yourself," he said. "Maybe it’s what you want." The first blow to her too-accessible ass forced a curse from her lips. One thing she’d learned from previous spankings—the more she resisted, the longer the punishment lasted. Teeth clenched and eyes tightly closes, she silently counted as he struck her. Five swats were manageable, but ten had her wincing with every blow. By the time he reached fifteen, her head roared and her ass was on fire. This was their relationship, not all of it and thankfully not all the time, but at the core he disciplined and she endured."


My opinion:

Characters.

There is not much to say about them really. They are one sided as it gets.
Female lead Kai is a psychic that can talk to animals and that is why she is at some archeological find (there is a very loose connection there, just go with it) and there she wanders around and happens to encounter a puma that is half man half puma, imagine the coincidence. She gets subdued, forced, tied up, kidnapped and sexually molested but it's fine because after the Stockholm Syndrome kicks in she retroactively decides she actually wanted it all along (forget the crying, kicking, screaming, fearing, trying to run away etc).

Puma is well, half human half beast. Male lead - Hok'ee is his human side and Puma is his, you get it, puma side. Apparently he got turned into one of these because he did not accept his Native American heritage, that is so vaguely explained that I just cannot be bothered with it. Something about him being a man and young and able to reproduce a lot or something and that is why he is punished along with other 4 or 5 and the rest are not. Just go with it, it doesn't matter anyway.


Story.

Hahahaha, what story damn... woman gets into the area where pumas live, one puma stalks this woman then violently ties her with big thick rope first putting in her mouth then behind her to tie her hands behind her back and in the end her legs and kidnaps her tied like that and sexually molests her while she is scared crying fearing him. Then she realises she cannot escape him so she doesn't resist as much and he forces himself on her and then after some time of abusing this woman and punishing her she suddenly has an epiphany! Hallelujah! She actually does want this savage chauvinist rapist after all. She didn't immediately realise but after being hit enough times it got beaten into her. She is mad about this monster now. Everyone rejoice.

In the very last chapter of this overly long book the author is trying to fix all of this crap happening throughout the book by having the monster be gentle to her for the first time ever. It doesn't work because she is already brainwashed, how he now behaves is a moot point because he knows she will never leave. Give me a break.


Unintentionally funny part.

At some point in the story this main male character is talking to another puma and that other one says how he came (ejaculated) by listening to Hok'ee raping the woman and he is currently stroking his co&k when this happens:

"Nodding, Anaba released his co&k and patted Hok'ee's knee. Occasionally, when solitude and the need for sex became too much for them, they pleasured each other. They just didn't talk about this aspect of their relationship."

Because why not. Imagine now those five pumas turning into men and all just having an all male orgy. But let's not talk about it too much.

Also, just to point out, saying when solitude becomes too much and he hasn't been a puma that long, it's somewhere between a couple of months and a year you really start to understand the author's thinking. Yes, men just cannot help it. They cannot service themselves occasionally, no no, a couple of months is too long for just your hand or nothing, when push comes to shove and there are no women to kidnap and rape, just call your best mate and let him handle it. Cause that is what your best friend is for.


All in all.

I have zero respect towards this book. Since this is the only book I have read from this author I won't say the same about the author but I also certainly won't read any of the other works. I am not into self-torture up to that degree.

If you want to read about how NOT to get a woman, how NOT to respond to your kidnapping and rape, how NOT to have a toxic and abusive relationship, this book will provide you with perfect guidelines and examples about it.

Having some issues posting to Booklikes, will post there when I get a chance.

Trigger warning: Rape and PTSD

So "Destiny's Captive" is the third and last book in the Destiny series. I have to say that the main reason why I didn't give this five stars is that I thought that Jenkins didn't do a great job with exploring the whole PTSD story-line. I know that this was of course written in consideration of the times of the day, but I thought everyone was acting way too much like [redacted] should just get over things. We get a glimpse into what happened and it's shocking and heart-breaking so I thought that everyone could have been more sympathetic. That said, I loved the love story between Noah and Pilar. The two of them worked well together. I also have to say that once again Jenkins does a good job of tying things into the time that the book was written. We get some ugly looks at segregation in this one with the two characters having to ride a train and being forced to segregate because they are not white. We also see how women even if they are capable, would not be able to run a business like the daughter of one of Noah's potential business partners wants to.

"Destiny's Captive" follows the Noah Yates. We have heard and seen glimpses of him in the first two books, but not much. We know that he is gone a lot and that his family misses him. We also heard in the first two books how he was kidnapped (or crimped) and forced to work aboard a ship before his family found him. Noah feels adrift and knows that he is not the same person he was before this happened and his family feels pained that he keeps them at a distance now. When Noah's ship is stolen though by a female pirate (Pilar), he promises to find her and get his ship back. When Pilar is almost captured she and her family make their way to her uncle in Florida. Pilar is wondering what is next for her when in walks the man whose ship she stole!

I thought that Jenkins does a great job of setting up Pilar and Noah. I do think as some other reviewers noted there's a bit too much going on in this one. And though I liked how Pilar and Noah eventually get together, I wish that we had more interactions with the brothers and sister in laws in this one since this was the last book. I thought the writing was really good and I did enjoy the romance scenes between Pilar and Noah. The flow worked for the most part until we got towards the end.

The setting of this book seems even more brutal than the previous books in this series. Jenkins includes the practice of crimping or shanghaiing in this one and we get to read what was done to Noah and others. I read up on crimping or shanghaiing and was shocked it took to the 1900s before the practice was outlawed. We also get to read a bit about Cuba's efforts to liberate due to Pilar's backstory.

The ending I think wrapped things up too quickly. We go from Noah being hurt to all of a sudden a secret being revealed and no one really getting a chance to deal with things. I also didn't like the fact that everyone acted as if [redacted] was in the wrong.

Man, gotta say, this series reminds me very strongly of Kushiel's Dart:

• Elegantly written
• Packed with court intrigue
• In a high fantasy setting that
• is at least partially modeled on Renaissance Venice

And also:

• Packed with sexualized violence and sexual violence
• That often rides the line of what I, personally, am willing to tolerate in fiction
• And for sure is over line for many readers
• Though I don't get the impression either writer is being prurient or provocative for its own sake. 

Weirdly, it was when the main relationship -- one between the titular captive prince and his captor -- shifted to a dynamic of more equitable standing that I kind of freaked out and had to stop reading at about 90% of the way through the middle book in the series. Still not sure what that was about, though I suspect that I freaked because their previous relationship -- one that was, in a word, abusive -- had been so normalized in the text that the shift made that abuse obvious. I'd been Stockholm syndrome'd along with the captive prince.

This isn't maybe the most interesting thing to do -- just observe how many people treat Humbert Humbert like some kind of romantic hero, and his relationship with Lolita as a grand love story, and you can see how easily readers will dupe themselves into siding with abusers. What's interesting is unmasking it for what it was, and then trying to move on from there.

So. Onto book three, I guess. 

Christian was captured, held captive, and tortured for almost a year. He is freed at war's end. This book had heavier issues due to this. He had to deal with the trauma done him- both physical and emotional. Gillian was married to an abusive man for 8 years before died of a stroke. To get an idea of how sadistic this guy was is he tried to frame Gillian for his (natural) death.
Both Christian and Gillian connect and find comfort in each other while carrying for Christian's daughter Lucy. Something happened and now Lucy does not speak at all. While he was a prisoner, his wife (Helene- Gillian's cousin) and son (Evan) died.
The book did drag for a little while in the middle. Then the suspected attempts on Gillian's life happened and it picked up again. I think the villain responsible for that (and Christian's capture in the first place) is easily guessed at. And also Lucy's inability to speak.
Girard's (AKA Sebastian St Clair) story is the next book and I admit to being leary about that. Girard was a villain in this one (he was one of Christian's torturers), but was humanized at the end of the book.
For Romance-opoly Courtship Row Moon track