Sidney Bell (1)

This book is so beautiful. A great plot, with lots of humor and great character development and interactions. Ghost is snarky, Duncan is just... I mean 'solid' doesn't do him justice but it's everything. The interactions with Church and Tobias are great. Estee and Abida are amazing. The way the book deals with trauma and recovery and relationship building and when people sometimes just need to do what's right by themselves is amazing.

Great end to the trilogy. Wonderful ride. I will definitely be rereading this series a lot.… (more)

(CW: This book has a past physical domestic violence scene between two of the main characters - and the way it's hand-waved away here is what I'm going to talk about).

The scene involving woman-on-man domestic violence (with physical punching) was really jarring to me to read - it's between Anya and Zac, two of the MCs, and I haven't seen it addressed, so I'm going to address it. I hate writing this, and I've edited it and nearly deleted it, but it also bothers me that no one appears to have seen something that was super glaring to me.

Given Bell obviously understands that male-on-male domestic violence is serious in Bad Judgment, this story reads like a woman hitting a man repeatedly, and hard enough to draw blood isn't significant at all. It doesn't warrant consequences, therapy, a 'shit this is not okay and that's something you need help to work on' or anything more than Zac apologising profusely and repeatedly after he was the one who was hit, followed by something like a honeymoon period where they have sex and eat chocolate dipped croissants and drink champagne. Eventually it's all kind of accepted as just 'this is the kind of tempestuous relationship we have.'

Bell actually writes the specifics of a classic domestic violence scene: Person is hit, person blames themselves and apologises profusely, the other person doesn't really apologise, a honeymoon period ensues with lovebombing and sweets and excuses like 'I'm hot-tempered and impulsive.' The aggressor never explicitly apologises, the victim apologises like 5 times. It could almost be a chilling and carefully constructed domestic violence scene except the way it's treated like nothing more than a normal argument. If roles were reversed, I feel people would've noticed. It would've been pretty damned obvious if Zac had hit Anya. Everyone would've been like 'I can't believe Anya stayed with Zac after he punched her twice in the face. He made her bleed. A chocolate covered croissant doesn't fix that.'

Does it need saying? Domestic violence is terrible, regardless of gender.

I actually liked a lot of the rest of the story, but there's a real lack of awareness and a lot of naivete in the choice to preserve an unnecessary DV scene. I was worried throughout that Anya might get angry enough to hit Zac again, or even Cal, and was kind of waiting for it. So I wanted to really dig deep into the characters, but just...was on the back foot after that scene.

Honestly surprised to see this from Bell, who has typically handled abuse storylines with dexterous aplomb and is one of the things I like most about many of her books. I really hope it was just an honest mistake. Wouldn't recommend this to anyone who's experienced domestic violence, it's jarring as hell, especially since nothing is done and Anya's gender apparently magically erases the need for it to be treated as a serious subject. :( … (more)