After the run-in with Rhys, Tamlin is angry enough that Feyre is legit frightened into hiding in her room and skipping meals so she doesn’t have to go out and see if he damaged the house or not. Which is…um…

So on the one hand Tamlin hasn’t been the ‘lose temper and fly into a rage’ type so it’s a bit of a weird departure. On the other hand, Tamlin literally kidnapped Feyre, there’s been a dramatic power imbalance between the two, and Feyre has been scared of him before. I didn’t have much objection to the romance because he was being conscientious and working within outside constraints, but the situation is made for abuse and if this is just a sign of the honeymoon phase ending then….I mean, it’s not outside the pattern.

Tamlin comes into her room later (without knocking) to tell her he’s sending her home. Feyre is shocked, under the impression that there was no way to do that, and Tamlin curtly tells her “IDK, I do what I want.” Hm, his good-guy character is tattering a bit more, if he could have done this whenever he wanted and just left the implication that he was forced to keep her around because ‘rules’ and such.

Feyre is confused by all this, says that she can handle whatever hardships might come down, and asks repeatedly to be told what’s going on. Tamlin persists with ignoring her requests as thoroughly as possible and insisting that she’s in danger if she stays.

“There’s no debate,” he snarled, and I glared at him. “Don’t you understand?”

Tamlin, you are making me very much regret saying neutral things about you.

Then, after refusing her requests, belittling her abilities and agency, and issuing orders, there’s kissy times. Because of course. Because that’s the pattern. Badger someone into accepting you as in control, then ‘reward’ them when they give in.

I should be more angry about this, but guys, I’m not going to lie, I’m just fucking tired. I’m blaming a lot of things, some this book and some just me being tired lately. I hear the last third of this book is ‘better,’ which I’m going to interpret as ‘has more variety of things for me to pick on,’ so here’s hoping. I’m just sick of seeing the same thing over and over again in this book; I want to pick on plot holes and world building, that’s my happy place.

Oh, and then there’s sex. Thanks to the ‘trying to be angsty’ lead-in, it reads as super skeevy and manipulative.

So let’s talk some more about those creepy warning signs and, specifically, how to avoid them. With B&B retellings it’s really hard to avoid the abusive relationship hallmarks, but it’s not impossible. A lot of the problem comes in the hot-and-cold attitudes of the ‘beast.’ First he’s scary, then he’s kind, then he’s scary, then he’s kind. I get the desire to do that, it builds drama and plays into that whole ‘changed by love’ idea. But flip-flopping between personality points is literally one of the biggest parts of an abusive personality. If you never know what mood your partner is going to be in, then you’re constantly off-balance and forced to fit your life around their personality, instead of both of you fitting together mutually. Mixing fear and tenderness really fucks up a person’s head, and having ‘honeymoon’ periods keeps the person hooked with the promise/hope of better times so that they stick around through the shitty parts, even though that hope is false and the cycle is just going to continue in perpetuity. Throw in a power imbalance and you’ve got all new levels of brain-fuckery going on.

Add to all that mess, in this chapter we’ve got “I can’t tell you because reasons” and “I’m going to make decisions for you because reasons.” It goes back to the flip-flop personality and contributes towards keeping the abused person unsettled and reactive, dependent upon their abuser and working to fit into the abuser’s life instead of having any standing on their own. Dependency is a huge part of abusive relationships.

So how do you handle all this in a B&B? Give Beauty agency, make the Beast consistent, and change the circumstances.

One thing I liked about the Disney version (though it is by no means perfect) was the Beast’s attitude. He was rough, but he was fairly genuine throughout and he didn’t flip-flop. He had his kind moments and didn’t know how to express them, and he got consistently better at expressing them through dealing with Belle. You get the sense that he needed practice more than ‘love’ to change, which seems reasonable considering he’s been in isolation since he was ten. (That will never not be a weird narrative choice to me.) Again, not a perfect example, because we don’t spend enough time with the characters to really establish habits or whether or not there’s a cycle to their relationship, plus there’s other factors creating a pretty steep imbalance between the two, and scaring the shit out of someone should mean they don’t have to deal with anymore if they don’t want. But at the base, I think the idea behind Disney’s Beast could have worked pretty well.

Giving Beauty agency is also a big part of making the relationship between the two more equal, and that’s hard to do unless you’re willing to change a lot of the set up. Because, see, Beauty can’t have agency unless she consistently choses to stay. Having her take the place of her father is all well and good and noble and such, but after that one choice she’s stuck, forced to endure whatever abuse his heaped upon her until the Beast finally gets his act together (if he ever does). The biggest part, though, is information. Information is power. The longer Belle goes completely uninformed about what’s going on (i.e., the nature of the curse) the less power she has and the less choice she has. We see that especially here with Feyre and this chapter, because taking away the answers means she has no means by which to form her own story. She’s entirely dependent upon what others dole out to her and the decision they make for her. Without information, she doesn’t have the ability to perform at the same level as the other characters. Beauty without information and without agency isn’t even a character, she’s a receptacle for first abuse and then ‘love.’ She’s like a therapy pillow that you punch until you’re not angry anymore. Beauty needs to be informed, and the weird thing is, I don’t think doing so takes away from the story at all. “This dude was cursed until he learns some manners” is fine as a starting point, it doesn’t have to be a big reveal, and she can then chose to stay on and work towards breaking the curse because she wants to. That’s a story, there’s nothing wrong with that story, so why does no one tell that story?

Tied into the last part, giving Beauty more choices means changing the circumstances of her association with the Beast. Obviously, kidnapping and imprisonment aren’t going to fly. But a circumstance that affects both Beast and Beauty (more or less) equally can still be done. Like, maybe the whole land is cursed along with the prince and Beauty volunteers as tribute because everyone knows the curse has to be broken but no one is quite sure how so she figures if she pokes around the castle enough she can figure it out? Maybe, in a more modern retelling, Beauty isn’t kidnapped but is hired to be housekeeper for the reclusive and surly millionaire? Maybe it’s the curse bringing girls in instead of the Beast’s own decision. There’s options here, tons of options, some that have been done before and some that haven’t been touched on, but changing things to take power away from the Beast and share it either will Beauty or the world at large goes a long way to making this concept a lot less creepy.

Alas, we have very little of that going on here. I mean, there’s a little of the circumstance change with Tamlin being bound by the treaty, although…uh, well, spoiler’s I’ve read suggest he’s really not, so that sucks.

The next morning, while preparing for her return to the ‘human’ world, Alis dresses her in fancy human fashions, which the book takes time to inform us are the very height of useless and stupid. Because, you know, of course. Pretty dresses are love, but also we still have to hate human things and they’re not allowed to do anything worthy of praise, otherwise how would you know that fairies are better?

There’s much carrying on that’s supposed to be emotional, but really just highlights how little choice Feyre has in anything, and then she gets in a fancy carriage that takes her away. The carriage takes her to a big fancy house, though not as fancy as Tamlin’s, because OF COURSE. Turns out this is where her family lives now, and when she shows up the believe that she’d gone to care for a wealthy aunt who has since died and left Feyre her fortune.

Such … such simple things: relatives dying and fortunes being left and paying respect to the dead. And yet—yet … a weight I hadn’t realized I’d still been carrying eased. These were the only things that worried them now.

…simple? Fucking simple? Sweetie, entire genres have been written on the heartache and guilt and complexity of that. While you’ve got…what, hot boys and poorly explained curses?

They fill Feyre in on the family’s change in fortune: a wealthy stranger insisted on using her father as a money manager, and her father…show managed to do that from a hovel with no resources or contacts or nearby financials hubs in a time of horse-and-carriage transportation. Haha, simple, right? Who needs logistics when you have fucking magic, but all those humans are simple, not like the magic fairies, ya know.

There’s also a pretty weird undercurrent of Nesta hate throughout the reunion scene. She keeps glaring and Feyre keeps commenting on it, going on about how cold and hard she is. Also she keeps carrying on about poor Tamlin and how something big’s about to go down, not that you’d know it from this book, which has been 28 chapters of complete and utter stalling.

And though I knew that the promise I had once made to my mother was fulfilled—though I knew that I truly was free of it, and that my family was forever cared for …

I mean…this is kind of a dick thing to say but…the family was already rich once and fell apart, so….