A review by gonturans
Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran

3.0

Meredith Duran is very good at writing exceedingly wretched men, and wonderfully complex relationships I love to read, and if you don’t find that attractive in your fiction, look elsewhere. The hero is particularly prone to physical shows of frustration, and the heroine earns his respect by simply not running away (she flinches from him, backs away, thinks he will kill her, and yet never does remorse ping on his emotional radar). There is a point I can tolerate this, as a fan of specific fictional wretched men and especially given the set up for the plot, HOWEVER: these allusions to his threat to her, bodily and otherwise, continues far enough into the book I grew uncomfortable.

Olivia has a spine of steel, a heroine who deserved perhaps a bit better in her counterpart. There’s a kindness in her life couldn’t take away.

The treatment of many of the other women in the text brings to mind a topic from a recent episode of the podcast Whoamance: many times, other women in romance would never be allowed to be the heroine in their own plot. It’s a frustrating flaw of the genre, and one I notice more often.