It occurred to me the next morning that my days with Matthew, thus far, had fallen into one of two categories. Either he steered the day along, keeping me safe and making sure nothing upset his careful arrangements, or the day unfolded without rhyme or reason.

So either he’s in charge, or chaos reigns?  Are you just incapable of organizing your own time when you’re with this guy, or is he preventing you from doing so?  Are you upset about this, happy about this, or just making an idle observation?  Because even though it’s incredibly creepy to have this going on, Diana just tosses it out like it’s a mere curiosity, like she’s saying that it hasn’t rained in a while.

So Diana decides that she’s going to take charge today and do what she wants to do.

Unfortunately my decision was bound to ruin what promised to be a wonderful day.

Except that apparently when she’s in control, life just isn’t as good as when someone else is in control. 

FEMINISM!

Well, so much for Diana taking charge.  First thing in the morning, she asks him for two bits of information, and both times he brushes her off and she doesn’t press the matter.  Instead, they spend a lot of time making out.  Because that’s what romance is, right?  It’s not being open and honest and supportive with your partner, it’s just lots and lots of kissing.  Truly, this is a cosmos-shaking love right here.

“Kiss me,” he commanded.

I complied without a second thought, amazed at the comfort between us.

It’s just…it’s that this is all so insidious.  It’s couched in a narrative and a word-choice that’s trying to normalize this kind of behavior.  It’s trying to say “see, this is a cute and sweet moment between them” by calling it ‘comfort’ and making Diana go along with things without complaint.  It’s taking what would, in real life, be very creepy and presenting it in a straightforward manner, which in turn encourages us to accept it in the same way.  There’s so much love-dovey crap in this book that you really have to take individual lines out, separate them from the gushing, and judge them independently to get a clear picture of what’s going on. 

This was so different from books and movies, where love was made into something tense and difficult.

…I…just…what?

Book, you are every movie cliche ever, how can you even say that?

Diana asks him to take her hunting, and he gets angry over the request, to the point where he even tells her not to come near him when he’s angry.  Hm, that’s on the list of abuse signs, isn’t it?  People reacting with blame and extreme anger as a first response to a request?

“Vampires aren’t in control when they’re hunting—not entirely. My mother certainly isn’t to be trusted when she smells blood.

She seemed pretty damn in control at the time.  Matthew’s always in control, too.  In fact, for all this drama going on about ‘dangerous’ vampires, we haven’t seen one single solid example of it.

We’ve seen Matthew being emotionally manipulative plenty of times, and he’s assaulted Diana at least twice that I can remember, but none of that was tied to his vampire-ness.

Well, bad writing aside, Matthew says that there’s a good chance he could accidently kill her while out hunting, and Diana insists that she totally trusts him and that would never happen.  Because apparently in Diana-land, ‘trust’ is a magically shield against ‘accidents.’  She shows absolutely no regard for either her own safety or his wishes, instead acting like she has some sort of right to every single facet of his life just because they’re making out on a regular basis now.  She’s trying to out-dick him, basically, and she’s doing it with the mindset that she’s being completely reasonable instead of completely invasive.

It was bad enough when Matthew was an inconsiderate jerk, but now both sides of this relationship are being horrible. 

Diana continues to insist that their love is perfect and that this somehow means they have to put each other in danger on purpose, until Matthew finally gives in and they go out to get the horses.  Yeah, they’ll be riding on this hunt.  I guess Matthew has never been afraid he might accidently eat a horse?

Matthew offers to go get a rabbit and kill it, but no, Diana insists on stalking and killing a deer, because she wants to be as gory as possible.  Really. 

“Since I’ve met you,” I said quietly, “you’ve shown me all the pleasant parts of being a vampire. You taste things I can’t even imagine. You remember events and people that I can only read about in books. You smell when I change my mind or want to kiss you. You’ve woken me to a world of sensory possibilities I never dreamed existed.”

I paused for a moment, hoping I was making progress. I wasn’t.

“At the same time, you’ve seen me throw up, set fire to your rug, and come completely unglued when I received something unexpected in the mail. You missed the waterworks, but they weren’t pretty. In return I’m asking you to let me watch you feed yourself. It’s a basic thing, Matthew. If you can’t bear it, then we can make the Congregation happy and call it off.”

“You make me feel inferior, therefore, I want you to do something embarrassing and personal so that I can drag you down to feeling as terrible as I do.  Because that’s what true love is all about: wishing your partner could feel as inferior as you do.”

Truly this is a love for the ages.

Then we get the most boring deer stalking ever.  They spot one nearby, and then very slowly and dramatically walk towards it.  Really.  Methinks this author has completely missed the point of that sport.  Tracking and following the deer is a hell of a lot more interesting than just stumbling across on by serendipity and then never again losing sight of it.

And then when he gets close enough, he sits on the ground and watches the damn deer.  For two hours.

For some reason this makes Diana want to fuck him.  No, I don’t know either.

Apparently he’s strategizing how to kill the deer?  But does he really need to watch it for two hours to do that?  I think we’re supposed to take away from this that he’s, like, deep and at one with nature and respecting the deer, over Ysabeau who just jumped up and ate it.  But Ysabeau got in a clean, fast kill and didn’t play with her food.  I just fail to see what’s so deep and meaningful about that fact that Matthew just happened to see this deer, then wandered over and watched it for two fucking hours.

Finally Matthew goes to get the deer, and Diana…magically tells it to calm down and die?  To no effect, Matthew still has to chase it and catch it before he eats it.

Oh, by the way, all that talk of how ‘dangerous’ it is to be around a feeding vampire?  Never once is Matthew presenting as a threat to her.  Either he’s very good at hiding that he wants to eat her, or it just never happened.

Now, I’m happy that we don’t have a story with a love interest trying to drain the blood out of his beloved.  But we just had a whole fucking chapter on how this was a supposedly dangerous even.  Either inject some actual danger or take out the wangst.  Right now?  All of this is just so painfully pointless.  I mean, why do we really need this bit with the hunting?  Really?  What did we learn?  That Matthew is even more perfect than perfectness, and that he’s a boring hunter and also gets perfectly clean kills and…I don’t know, communes with the Great Spirit or something.  Why not.  Point is, there was no character growth, no development, and no conflict.  It was just perfect people being perfect, then whinging about it.

Then they sit around and talk more about  how they trust just absolutely every fucking person in the world apparently, and how that makes these other people incapable of ever hurting them ever, because accidents and miscommunications don’t happen.  Trust means never making an oopsie, I guess. 

Then they talk again about how Diana is ‘brave’ for loving him, because we really need to harp on that.  I mean, sure, given the circumstances, it can count as brave, but it’s literally the only note she’s been given.  And when the only thing your female character can be ‘brave’ about is love, that’s pretty sad.

And they walk home and thankfully this entirely pointless chapter finally comes to an end.  When will the plot come back?