Friends, have you read Bond of Hatred by Lynne Graham? OMG, it’s a hate thing, it’s a love thing. That’s one of the reasons why, from page one, I’m absolutely ducking hooked.
Duck: As long as we’re hooked and not cooked, we’re good.
By the way, there are some mild spoilers coming….
Gosh, I adore that love-hate thing that Lynne Graham has captured so well. Rage, oh rage, you make my knees weak! You see, I was raised in a family where everyone was constantly angry, but pretended they were at peace. Passive aggression rained down—and when it actually erupted, I had to beware, especially if the parent concerned was driving at the time. The eruptions happened more as I grew older, but as a younger child, I almost longed for them—frightening though they were. Why? For the same reason I found thunderstorms freeing. Once the oppressive tension was released, the threat had momentarily gone. Finally, I could cry.
In Bond of Hatred, metaphorically speaking, the thunder comes crashing down and lightening forks the ground. Enemies to lovers? Duck yes! There’s a child at stake—a baby the wealthy and powerful Alex Terzakis is determined to take away from Sarah Hartwell, even though he has no legal rights. And he’ll stop at nothing to get the child. The guy has a way of being misogyny defined! Sarah has good reason to hate Alex. From her viewpoint, if it weren’t for him, Sarah’s sister—the baby’s mother—might still be alive today.
How’s that for stakes?
Sarah refuses all amounts of money from Alex, even though Alex says she can name her price. But angry, daring, righteous Sarah, who will never sacrifice her access to the child, comes up with the ultimate price. And her offer has little to do with actual money. The idea makes her laugh out loud because she’s sure he’d never accept it.
What she doesn’t realize is that once the thunder has broken the ground and the shock has worn off, he’s going to say YES.
Duck: Duck, no! He’s going to say YES when she’s a DUCK? The QUACKDUCKERY!
Me: She isn’t a duck, hon. It doesn’t go that dark.
Duck: Thank cod!
This is what happens after Alex has angrily taken hold of Sarah’s wrist:
Sarah jerked away violently and started down the stairs. ‘Keep your filthy hands to yourself! I can’t bear you to touch me,’ she hissed.
‘Liar.’
She spun round in the hall in a furious turmoil of emotion. Alex Terzakis lounged back against the wall, exuding a blaze of devastating sexual awareness. She had never seen that in a man before. She saw it now, recognised it …. Raw sexuality sizzled from him, in the tautened poise of his lean, hard body, in the smouldering depths of the golden eyes sliding over her ….
“Bond of Hatred” by Lynne Graham
Oh boy, someone pass this Brit an Elizabethan-style fan ….
I’ve experienced a lot of hatred in my life around my sexuality. (Content warning: There’s some tough sexual and identity stuff in this and the next paragraph.) My parents, particularly one of them, sensed I was queer, and both hated and shamed me for it. Then there’s all the societal oppression I’ve experienced from being queer, nonbinary, and disabled. I’ll add the fact that throughout my childhood, I was sexually abused, and also that my first sexual experiences were full-on assault. And when I told a parent about this, I was slut-shamed.
But the shouting? The shouting rarely happened. Even though one parent loathed the other and told me about it regularly, between them there was a bitter, seething silence—noses were raised, plates were crashed onto the table, the washing up was noisy, the looks were sour.
Bring me the thunder any day!
I say that, of course, but in reality, I don’t want any aggression. I just want it in my romance books. It kind of sets me free.
It’s different for all of us, isn’t it? We’ve all suffered different things and have different responses, different routes to freedom. I’ve spent two decades unpeeling my childhood in therapy, and wow, I feel so much better now—freer, happier. The past has made me who I am today, which is why I’m grateful. It’s also why I decided to release the past—drop it, let is smash.
Still, those loud, aggressive fights between Alex and Sarah in Bond of Hatred will always be enticing for me. And safe too. Because they’re just fiction developed for my enjoyment in a genre that, as a child, I was raised to scorn. No wonder I love to write romance too.
I hope, friends, that you have your own safe spaces where you love to play and transform your inner world!
Romancey Pants 