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I picked this up hoping for a brutal and engrossing soap opera and Monson delivered. She is not messing around. There's plenty of action and mayhem. As anyone who has heard of this book probably knows, Sean kidnaps and rapes Catherine to get back at her father because he commandeered a brutal raid in the town Sean lived in that resulted in the rape and murder of his mother. He also beats her, starves her, makes her wear neck and ankle chains, works her to exhaustion, and continually threatens to murder her. He also goes into kind of rage fugue states where he loses complete control of his actions and can't recall them the next day. The raping actually stops earlier in the book than I anticipated but fear not, other abuses persist.

Catherine and Sean both have appropriately tortured back stories, and this book heaps comically over the top suffering upon them, especially Catherine. Over the course of this wild tale Sean shifts from violent to domineering, controlling, and "protective" of Catherine. Catherine resists, throwing back a lot of sass mouth, trying to escape, before eventually realizing her traitorous body lurrrves Sean. Eventually, the sheer power of their sexual chemistry overcomes their mutual hatred. Before we get to our (lol) HEA there are side dalliances for both (and other women who are so hot for Sean they try to kill Catherine too natch), periods of imprisonment for both, and tons of pain including multiple near death experiences for our intrepid couple. The roster of scheming supporting characters is also fun.

I enjoyed this book a lot. Everything about it feels epic. The big personalities, the nutso plot twists, the intensity of the characters' suffering, the flowery writing, so much meaty drama. The characters are spirited, resilient, and resourceful, always up for a spontaneous surgery, mercy killing a family member, or improbably surviving grievous bodily injury. (view spoiler)[ Of course, Catherine does have her 18 months of catatonia after she suffers broken ribs and a punctured lung from a Sean beating/fall from a horse plus a serious infection from not expelling her dead fetus from the womb after a starvation induced miscarriage (hide spoiler)] The only downside is, as is typical for the genre, this book is too long. You could lose most of the last 100 pages of this no problem. I didn't really care about the French hijinks. Also, (view spoiler)[ I was also disappointed Sean and Catherine weren't half siblings after all. Sean's brother Liam, who also pines for and eventually marries Catherine, tricks them into thinking they're related. I wish Monson had committed to the crazy and had this actually be true, especially since Sean and Catherine have a kid together. Just lean into the wrongness of it all. (hide spoiler)]