Dark Dominion by Charlotte Lamb

 

When I finished DARK DOMINION, I actually just sat there for a moment, staring at the closed cover, and thinking, "What the heck did I just read?" I know some of these old skool Harlequin Presents romances have a reputation for being really weird, but Charlotte Lamb in particular seemed to take a particular savage pleasure in pushing the envelope as far as it would go, just to see if it would rip.

Caro, our heroine, is an ex-actress who gave up the theater life for her lawyer husband, James. James is 10+ years older than her and their relationship has been a case of opposites-attract until it suddenly wasn't. Maybe that was because Caro casually stopped taking her birth control without informing James first, which made him angry, which made her angry. Then she had a miscarriage, which was followed by cold silences. She agonizes over what was, and what might have been, until she finds out that he might be cheating on her. Then she flies into the arms of her not-so-platonic friend, Jake, who has been waiting for this moment ever since his purchase of his Nice Guy Survival Handbook™.

This is a love triangle with cheating (emotional and some physical intimacy), which I think is going to put a lot of people off. It helps that all of the characters are total trash people, though. Jake says a bunch of sexist stuff and forces a brutal kiss on the heroine, and James does the same-- and he also hits the heroine (fun). We also find out that the reason he was so angry about the thought of her having a baby was because he was JEALOUS of his own IMAGINED CHILD and didn't want to share Caro with a baby. No, I am not joking. Also, apparently the reason he acts so cold is because he's madly in love with her and has been this whole time, and he was afraid of her finding out. Dude, this isn't Raiders of the Lost Arc. Your face isn't going to melt off if you do some soul-searching to face your own emotional constipation. Try telling this to James, though, who thinks attempted strangulation followed by dub-con is the best way to a woman's heart. But Caro, the fool, eats this up on a silver spoon. When he tells her that they can't be together because he's afraid his passion (read: anger management issues) might LITERALLY kill her, she's like, "Ohhhh, James."

Now, abuse is abuse, sure. But Caro dives into toxic relationships the way Olympic swimmers dive into swimming pools: speedily, and with full knowledge of what she's doing. She is gleeful about the two men fighting over her, comparing herself to a bone being tugged on by two vicious dogs. She tells James that she wants "both of them." Possibly just to provoke him further. Also, there's the whole "whoops-threw-out-my-birth-control-accidentally-on-purpose" thing. She's a psycho, too, in her own special way. By the end of the book, I didn't care who was getting the happily-ever-after. I just wanted to sit here, munching popcorn and laughing at this clown car of a romance novel.

Is it weird that I enjoyed this book? Probably not if you know me. DARK DOMINION has aged like soft cheese in a hot sun, but it's a compelling hot mess, regardless. Charlotte Lamb does "hot mess" quite well, and I will say that I respect her for making her heroines just as awful as the heroes. Sometimes, I feel really bad for the heroines in HPs, because it feels more like Stockholm syndrome than a romance. At least in a Charlotte Lamb "romance," I can rest easier knowing that the hero is going to be doomed to a lifetime of misery when he ends up with a heroine who's just as crazy as he is.

2.5 out of 5 stars