Grade: A-

I read this book when it was first published ten years ago. I was wee one, then, and thought that it was hot shit. I was utterly entranced by it. I was particularly fascinated by the hero, Gray Rouillard, a man ruled by his passions and sexual impulses, an erection with legs and arms, if you will. More on that later. I wanted to read this book again to see if it thrill me the way it did when I was a kid. It’s still hot stuff, I still devoured every page, but Jesus H. Monkey Crap, had the main villain always been so obvious? When I first read this book and found out who the villain was at the end, I was like “Whoa”. I was also sixteen and very naïve. I wanted to re-read it and see if there were any clues that would lead to a logical villain, but spank me in the ass and call me Susan, there are about a hundred! Was I just really kind of stupid before not to figure it out until the villain literally jumped out of the bushes, yelling “Ha ha, it was me all along! It was me!”? Man, I wouldn’t make a good detective at all!

Anyway, the heroine is Faith Devlin. When she was a little girl, her family was pretty much like Britney Spears’ trashy, skanky family, only without the money (and I mean WITHOUT the money), and they lived in a little shack in the woods owned by her mother’s married lover. Poor Faith: Her dad is a mean drunk, her two older brothers are stupid and also mean drunks, her mother is the town skank, her older sister seems intent on following her mother’s footsteps, and her baby brother, probably as a result of both of her parents and backwater ancestors PISSING IN THE GENE POOL, is mentally retarded. In this insane family unit, Faith is the only responsible one and pretty much serves as everyone’s slave and toilet. The one true joy and light in her sad, pathetic, suicide-inducing life is Gray Rouillard, the town’s golden boy, her mother’s married lover’s son, and the heir apparent of one of the wealthiest families in Louisiana. Faith has no illusions whatsoever that Gray will take one look at her, fall in love with her, and take her away from her family, because she believes that Gray is way too good for her. Gray, to her, is that one unattainable dream that she knows could never come true, but her life will be happier, anyway, because he exists and she can dream about him at the end of a particularly hellish day. Her family sucks, she lives in a shack, the entire town thinks they’re trash, but she has her dreams about Gray, and that is enough for her.

That’s so fucked up, seriously.

The hero, Gray Rouillard, doesn’t have the perfect life that everyone thinks he has. Sure, he’s the star of his college football team. Sure, his family is rich beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. Sure, he’s damn good-looking and has no problem attracting the ladies. None of that means anything, though, when his sister is crazy with weird daddy issues, his mother is a frigid, closed off, unemotional Ice Queen who has never hugged him, and his dad is fucking the biggest slut in town, and everyone knows it! When his father disappears one day, prompting his mentally unbalanced sister to attempt suicide (she does not succeed) and pushing his mother to have a nervous breakdown from which she never fully recovers, Gray naturally assumes that his father has run away with Faith’s mother, Renée, and goes on crazy berserker mode. Once a hedonistic bad boy type who had no worries other than who he’d fuck next, he now has to take over the reins of his family, as well as the family business. When Faith’s mother, Renée, disappears on the same night as his father, Faith’s family becomes the target for his rage. After dropping off his near-death sister at the hospital, he drives over to Faith’s shack with a bunch of cops and throws them out for squatting on Rouillard land. As he watches Faith try in vain to gather their meager belongings (her father and asshole brothers keep knocking them out of her arms, saying they’re not going anywhere), he realizes how hot she is in her nightgown (she is only fourteen… yuck!), and that the cops think she’s hot too. After all, she is the spitting image of her hot slut mother, has the same heady sensuality, but she’s pure and innocent, so it just makes her so much hotter. Again, yuck. Anyway, he succeeds in driving the Devlins out of town and tells them that if they ever return, they will regret it. Aww, Gray is so nice.

I have one word to say about this book: Wow. I mean, WOW. It’s cheesy, convoluted, and pretty much a soap opera, but goddamn, if it isn’t entertaining. It’s your classic white trash versus the richest family in town story, only the white trash family disappears after a few chapters, and the only one left is Faith Devlin, who returns to Prescott after 12 years because she’s rich now, too, and she’s got questions that need to be answered, damn it! Sure, her family is trash, but she thought they got the shitty end of the stick when they are forcibly removed from their home, especially after she finds out that her mother didn’t run away with Guy Rouillard, Gray’s father. She ran away, sure, but ran away by herself. Now that she has money and a successful business of her own, Faith believes that she can return to Prescott to live there, but only if she can clear her mother’s name. The second she arrives in town, however, Gray is immediately alerted by the town gossips, and he kicks her out of the motel where she is staying. Undaunted, Faith buys a house just outside of town, sets up shop, and begins investigating the night of Guy’s disappearance. She is still in love with Gray Rouillard, but thinks he’s being an unreasonable prick and there’s no way he can stop her. She’s a woman on a mission, damn it!

Speaking of pricks, Gray’s penis might as well have been a character in this story. Whenever Gray thinks of Faith, it twitches. Whenever he sees her, it gets hard. Whenever he touches her, whoooooooo! In this book, Gray does not have any scenes with Faith that we don’t find out what his penis thinks of the situation. Also, from the way Ms. Howard describes it, it sounds HUGE. Gray is described as a hot, delicious Creole dude who is rich and speaks French—and Lord knows I love me a man who can make love in French—but I want nothing to do with his battering ram… err, penis. I just don’t equate lovemaking with bruised ovaries. Maybe I’m talking crazy here, but that’s just me.

Anyway, Gray wants Faith very badly and whooooh boy, does he ever. He becomes obsessed with the color of her hair, the smell of her skin, the way she moves… I mean, whenever Gray thinks about her, it’s pretty hot stuff. He wants nothing more than to play house with her and get to the fizznuckin’, but he is torn between a rock and a hard place, and as he tells the family attorney, the rock is his family and the hard place… is in his pants. Oh, that Gray. He is so funny. Do you see what he did there, the rock is his family and the hard place is… um, ahem. Where was I? He wants to show Faith the magic of his penis over and over again, but his family is bat-shit crazy. His emotionally unstable sister is fucking the family lawyer because she sees him as a daddy figure and now that he is the one who takes care of her mother, she offers herself to him in exchange so that he won’t go away like daddy. Or some fucked up bullshit like that. And his mother? Has locked herself up in her room and refuses to come out because she is paranoid that the entire town is talking shit about her. Crazy!

When Faith starts receiving threatening notes and mutilated animals telling her to get the hell out of town (the notes, not the mutilated animals, because they’re dead and dead mutilated animals don’t talk. Even live ones.), she perseveres and continues with her investigation because she WILL NOT BE DRIVEN OUT OF TOWN AGAIN, damn it. Gray goes into his overprotective mode because he luuuuuurves Faith and wants to bone her a hundred times a day, so he starts stalking her, showing up wherever she goes (don’t you just love when romance heroes do this?). Now, I really like the relationship that develops between Faith and Gray they have lots of hot sex and each scene that they are together just oozes with chemistry (or maybe it’s STDs because Gray has fucked the entire female population of Louisiana). Gray begins to grudgingly respect Faith, especially the way she has made something out of herself against all odds. Faith, on the other hand, began her investigation intending to clear her mother’s name, but in the end, it becomes about finding out what happened to Gray’s father in order to give Gray closure… because she luuuurves him too!

There is also a cute, funny après-sex scene near the end that just absolutely tickled me and reminded me of those happy times that Felicity and Ben had, just laying in Felicity’s bed and laughing, in between scenes of Ben cheating on Felicity, Felicity cheating on Ben, Ben impregnating women fifteen years older than him, Ben going bat-shit worried about getting into med school, Ben cheating on Felicity some more (this time with the Pink Power Ranger), Felicity cheating on Ben some more, Felicity going back in time to choose Noel over Ben, Felicity returning to her previous time line to pick Ben over Noel, and Ben having issues with his recovering alcoholic dad (can you tell I’ve been watching Felicity reruns on WE?). Ah, good times. I’d still pick Ben over Noel any day, though.

Anyway, I like Faith. She is smart, ambitious, very likeable, and genuinely cares about Gray (though I think a lot of that is residual from her giant crush on him as a kid), but I don’t understand why she would want to return to a town that treated her entire family like shit. I mean, I DON’T GET IT. And I think that’s what weakens the story for me. I mean, she KNOWS that her mom didn’t run away with Gray’s dad, so what’s her investment in finding out what really happened to him? Besides, why would she even care if the whole town thinks her family is shit? She had a nice life in Dallas, owns a successful business, so I don’t understand why she would want to return. Is Faith a masochist? ‘Cause that would be hot. Especially if she and Gray had spanking and BDSM scenes like in Secretary. Sigh. I’m a perv.

Oh, and the villain thing? Jesus, how did I not know? I’m brain-damaged, seriously.

All and all, I had an awesome time re-reading this book. Gray is hot, Faith is hot, and they’re hot together. The drama of the families and the town (there ARE ramifications to Gray’s dad slutting it up with the married women in town) is just absolutely delicious. It’s lurid and dirty and cheesy, but it’s awesome. I mean, if Frank Miller ever wrote a romance novel, it would be something like this, but with a lot more leather, whores, booze, drugs, violence—okay, so it’s not like a Frank Miller graphic novel at all, but it’s still awesome. And dirty! Dude, HOW AWESOME would it be if Frank Miller wrote a romance novel?

Oh, and Gray? Call me! Let’s chat, baby, but keep your penis in your pants, mmkay? It scares the crap out of me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.