I’m a fan of a
good romance novel once in awhile. And I’m also a fan of Karen Robards. So,
even though To Love A Man (1988) was
published 24 years ago, I went in with relatively high expectations. I chose this book because I was craving some romance, and this
was one of the few books available on kindle from my library. That should have
been my first clue, but I figured since I enjoy her writing now, I probably
would enjoy what she’s written in the past. But I was wrong. This was one of the worst
books I have ever read. The writing was repetitive and boring, the
characters were unlikable, and the hero was a complete asshole.
Lisa Collins
comes from a family with money and works as a journalist at one of the
newspapers her grandfather owns. She married her college sweetheart who turned
out to be gay and had one child who died of Leukemia. In an effort to get away,
Lisa Collins accepts an assignment in war-torn Rhodesia. When the farm where she
is staying is attacked by rebels, everyone is killed and everything is set on
fire. Lisa manages to escape and runs into Sam Eastman, a mercenary hired to--I
don’t know, start a war or make the current leader look bad, or something. Because
Lisa is making too much noise when she is running for her life, Sam punches her
in the face, knocking her out. Sexy.
I don’t even
know how to explain the rest of it. Lisa is all drugged up and has some sex
with Sam. Sam has some bad history with his ex-wife, decides that Lisa is a
"slut" like his ex-wife, and treats her like crap. I don’t even want to go into
all the details because it’s embarrassing that this was even written down. It’s
probably enough to know that Sam “shamed and humiliated” Lisa more times than I
wanted to read. That included carrying her naked through camp after she was
almost raped by two of his men (and he blamed her for that, of course). Then he
forced her to have sex with him for the remainder of their stay. Lisa also
always “took an instinctive step backward” whenever Sam was around—a good sign that he's a keeper. Unbelievably, Lisa does decide she loves him. Yet when they get
out of Africa, Sam suddenly becomes jealous of
Lisa’s wealth. So he calls her a “spoiled bitch” and leaves her. Eventually, of
course, they get back together, but at that point I’d rather they kept their
distance.
I was disturbed that this book was published and was even apparently popular. It
made me wonder if I would have been more accepting of this book if I had read
it when I was younger and more naïve about the reality of relationships. I hope not. There
were so many red flags: any woman would be smart to run from that guy as fast
as she could. He was violent, mean, jealous, and incredibly immature. His drastic mood swings forced Lisa to constantly attempt to
soothe him. He was, in fact, the definition of an abusive boyfriend. I understand
that domination can be sexy, but if that’s what this book was going
for, it was not successful.
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