“The Heir,” by Catherine Coulter, is the worst romance novel I’ve ever read. And read the whole thing out of sheer lack of anything else new to read.
Fellow Dopers, admit to reading romance sometimes, and weigh in with the gory details of the worst you’ve read.
**The heroine:**Arabella, daughter of the Earl of Strafford. She has a half-sister by the earl’s first wife.
**The hero:**Justin, Earl’s heir.
**How they meet:**Arabella’s father has died, and the book opens on the day his will is to be read. She’s mourning her dad, and runs across Justin lounging by a pond. She mistakes him for a bastard of her father. Meaning, she spends a significant amount of the opening thinking he’s her half-brother. Now that’s hot.
Her father’s will then announces that this is his great nephew, making him her second cousin, and plus also Arabella must marry Justin within the week or become homeless when he assumes the title. Justin must marry her or not inheret the main estate. They agree to marry after tedious and often physically violent arguments.
The big sex scene: Just before the wedding, Justin sees Arabella coming out of the barn, then a French compte coming out of the barn a little while later. Naturally, he assumes they had sex. He seethes. They get married. On the wedding night, he calls Arabella a bitch, a slut, a whore, tears off her nightgown and rapes her. This rape scene is described in a whole shitload more loving detail than any of the subsequent fucking, which is mainly between Arabella’s mom and the physician.
How it all goes horribly, horribly wrong: This is an actual, for-real quote:
You can see where this is going. She asks him why he’s being mean. He won’t tell her. He discovers she’s a virgin in the classic way, and then says that only means she had anal sex or gave the compte a blowjob. Seriously.
**Icky other (miscellaneous notes of interest):**In a flashback, Arabella’s mom falls in love with the physician while she’s giving birth to Arabella. This is also the moment he fell in love with her.
Also, the half-sister (Elspeth) falls in love and has an affair with – losing her virginity to – the compte mentioned earlier. She thinks they’re first cousins. He is later to be revealed to be her half-brother. She never learns this, though; all the other principle characters do. The compte dumps her brutally and leaves.
**In conclusion:**Arabella forgives and falls in love with her rapist husband for no discernible reason than the author’s hurry to get it over with. The mom and physician get married. Elspeth randomly hooks up with some other guy. The end.
Ugh.