So Speaks the Heart is not my first Johanna Lindsey. My first was Prisoner of My Desire, and that was the book that got me hooked on her work. That novel also has a very uncomfortable non-consensual dynamic, but somehow it worked for me in a way this one absolutely did not. Rowena is forced by her stepbrother into using Warrick to produce an heir, and although what she does to him is still rape, she is acting under terrible duress. When I first read it at about twenty-three years old, I also remember being struck by something I had probably never really considered before: yes, a man can be raped by a woman, even a man physically strong enough to tear her in two if he were not restrained. Warrick later turns the tables on Rowena in revenge, but the obsession between the two of them is so strong that, however messed up the relationship is, I somehow never found them completely repulsive as a couple.
Unfortunately, So Speaks the Heart gave me a very different reaction. Brigitte de Louroux is a wealthy heiress who has been reduced to living like a servant under her aunt Druoda after her brother Quintin is believed dead. When Brigitte tries to escape, Rowland of Montville mistakes her for an actual servant and takes her back. Things only get worse when Druoda manipulates the situation further and convinces Rowland that Brigitte is Quintin’s mistress, which leads to him taking Brigitte away with him under a completely false impression of who she is.
And this is where the book lost me. The words “Stockholm syndrome” kept coming to mind the more I read it. Rowland has scumbag written all over him. He sees Brigitte as someone beneath him, someone he can control and use, and the romance asks me to eventually accept that this develops into love. I simply couldn’t.
The fact that Brigitte is actually a noblewoman does not make Rowland’s behaviour any easier for me to accept. If anything, it makes the whole thing worse. He has already shown me how he is prepared to treat a woman when he believes she is beneath him. Finding out later that she has the “right” social status does not suddenly make him a better man. As the saying goes, when someone shows you who they really are, believe them. Rowland showed me. I believed him.
Brigitte frustrated me as well. I wanted considerably more resistance from her than I got, especially considering how strongly the story initially presents her as someone determined not to be anyone’s slave. Instead I spent too much of the book wondering why I was supposed to root for her attachment to this man. With Rowena and Warrick in Prisoner of My Desire, however twisted their circumstances were, I could understand the attraction and obsession. Here I mostly wanted Brigitte to get away from Rowland.
Perhaps this is simply one of those older bodice-ripper romances whose hero-heroine dynamic has aged particularly badly for me. I can tolerate a lot in fiction when the chemistry convinces me, but this one never managed that. Instead of passionate, I found the relationship unpleasant; instead of romantic, it felt disturbingly close to Stockholm syndrome.
Not my cuppa tea. I honestly could have given this one star. The second star may simply be because it is Johanna Lindsey, and I know from Prisoner of My Desire that she can make even a completely outrageous premise work for me.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
