Heroines Who Reclaim Their Narratives: Naima Simone’s Only for a Night

2019-02-27T17:44:00.002-05:00

Content Warning: stillbirth.

One of the many things I love about Romance novels is that a lot of the stories are about women reclaiming and reshaping their personal narrative into something that speaks of happiness, agency, and love. In Naima Simone’s Only for a Night, Harper has been widowed for two years and she’s mourning the loss of her child and husband, but most importantly, the loss of her own sense of self and worth to the years she gave to an unfulfilling marriage. So, like many heroines before her, she decides that even if her grief will probably always be there, she can do one thing that’s purely for herself, something she always wanted and never got: she can have amazing, hot sex. In order to do that, she seeks the help of a man she used to love when she was young, a man with whom she shares a lot of history, but who also happens to own a sex club or, as the novel puts it, “the hottest and most exclusive aphrodisiac club” which means that in this universe there are enough similar clubs to justify the clarification that this one is the best, and that we have officially moved up from secret sex dungeons. She goes to him, not because she loved him (although this is a Romance so there’s some of that) but because he has what she wants and needs.

This is a story about a woman who didn’t know good sex until the hero showed her everything, which I don’t love, but there are two key elements that spoke to me and tempered my initial rejection of the trope. First, the heroines always knew she wasn’t having good sex, and she didn’t blame it on herself. She tried to talk her husband into spicing things up, but he shut her down in ways that were pretty abusive, which did chip away at her confidence, but these are all things she realizes on her own, things she’s resolved to change. And second, she’s the one who pursues the hero. He doesn’t have to gently cajole her out of her shell, she’s already out and ready for what’s to come. She’s taking control of her life. She’s reclaiming her narrative.

Anger shoved the hurt aside, surging hot and hard inside her. She’d been dismissed, shelved, or patronized too often in her life. She’d also been mute, opting to remain silent, not rock the boat. Not voice her needs, her wants…her desires. Years ago, he’d been the first person to teach that confessing what—or who—you needed resulted in rejection, humiliation. Terrance had solidified that lesson. Well, that time had passed.
She was tired of living—no, existing—in a cocoon that was supposed to be safe but was really suffocating.
And he didn’t get to push her back into that cocoon.

When the hero dares to imply that she doesn’t know what she wants, she quickly informs him that he’s full of shit.

Are you telling me that because of sex I don’t know my own mind?” He parted his lips, but she slammed up a hand. “Never mind. I’ve had enough of people instructing me on what I mean, what I’m thinking, and what I need. If you don’t want me, that’s one thing. But please don’t patronize me.

This isn’t a perfect book. The hero is a pretty standard alpha who used to be a member of the Irish mob (!) and now runs the aforementioned aphrodisiac club (!!) and maybe has a threesome with one of his brothers (!!!) I think he’s just a very close friend, but at one point I thought he was the brother, so I want you to share in my (misplaced) shock. And did I say that this is a novella? So it’s not as if we spend much time on him, and even if he’s not at all the center of the story, we could’ve toned down the angst and still have plenty of stuff to mine tension from. But, you know, Irish mobster who owns a sex club is all anyone will ever need to know to make an informed decision on whether this book will work for them or not, so I can’t say that I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into. So, not a perfect book, but a pretty great heroine who embodies a lot of the qualities that make this genre special.

Welcome to The Romance Backlist

2019-01-15T10:35:00.002-05:00

Hello! I assume most of you already know me, but in case you don’t, my name is Brie and I’ve been reviewing romance novels for the past eight* years on my (now old) blog, Romance Around the Corner, and other places such as Heroes & Heartbreakers (RIP)**. When I started my original site, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew that I wanted to be an active member of a community that had given me a lot of joy. It was a wonderful journey that made me a better reader and introduced me to amazing people, many of whom I now call friends and all of whom I deeply admire. But burnout happens and reviewing takes energy that I simply didn’t have anymore, and yet, I kept thinking to myself that I was just taking a break, even when the months kept piling on. I love blogging and I didn’t want to say goodbye to it, but the thought of writing reviews under the same format felt draining and exhausting until I realized that what I really wanted to do was talk about books and the genre without the constrictions of what I think of as a review. With that realization came the idea that maybe I needed a clean break and perhaps even a different set of constrictions that would feel freeing rather than limiting. I think Romance Around the Corner could fit into what I want to do now, since it’s not really that far from what I was already doing there, but a fresh start is the emotional unloading that I desperately needed, and it makes me happier and more energized than I’ve been in years.

So, The Romance Backlist will be a book blog about Romance novels, and it will still mostly feature reviews, but they won’t be as structured (no more plot recaps unless strictly necessary!) and I will try to use each article to take a look at either the big picture in terms of genre or to just take a closer look at what the books are doing with Romance. Sometimes the posts will be good old regular reviews, and sometimes I’ll pick a couple of books and contextualize them while examining their similarities, differences, and what they owe to each other and the genre. I'd like to talk about individual tropes and past trends. I have lots of plans and ideas, some of which I’ve been thinking about for literally years.

What I won’t be doing is reviewing new and upcoming releases. The biggest burden, to me, was this need to stay on top of everything that was being published and all the books generating hype. That urge to be part of the conversation turned into a lot of pressure and made me forget that it wasn’t the conversation, but a conversation, and since I firmly believe that there is an audience for book talk regardless of titles and publication dates, I want to get rid of the anxiety and negative feelings I had attached to that aspect of book blogging. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be reading new books, but I won’t be talking about them here. So, the rule I’ve set up is that I will only feature books that are at least a year old, which in theory doesn’t sound like much, but feels quite long when I look at how fast the romance publishing rate is.

There are other things that I want to do for the blog as well as the romance community in general:

The most important is that I want this to be an inclusive site that highlights and features diverse voices. I’m aware of how white/cis/straight my reading list has been, and I need to do much better.
I want to do a better job at promoting the blog and not be embarrassed if I tweet a link more than once.
I want to signal-boost and support the blogs I love—the ones I’ve been reading since before I had my own, and the newer ones doing such an amazing job. Engagement is important and rewarding for both reader and blogger, and I can worry all day about what’s happening to romance blogs and websites, but if I don’t actually read, comment, and spread the word about them, do I really have to wonder what's happening?
And I want to talk about books on twitter more, which is where I’ll be mentioning recent releases, because there’s a robust, insightful conversation taking place daily, and I want to contribute more. And, you know, I already spend a lot of time on twitter, so it’s not as if I haven't already given myself away to the social media gods.

That’s it! I hope you join me in this new journey, and I really, really hope I make it or else all the time I spent yelling at Blogger will go to waste, and who wants that?! Not me! Just do it for all the chores I neglected while I was building this thing. The first post will go live next month, but in the meantime you can follow the blog's Twitter feed here or follow me directly....or both! I do like the attention.

* You better believe I’m also counting the year I wasn’t active!
**It was just H&H (RIP), but let’s just pretend that I was all over Romancelandia and everyone knows me, so that my inflated sense of self-importance isn't threatened by facts.