Unpaused this book but i'm starting to see why i paused it in the first place🫣

Emilia is low key annoying. im mad this author is making me like the MMC more than the FMC 🥀🥀🥀🥀

I feel as though I’m in the minority here when I say that I’m not annoyed with James over him not having told Cordelia about the bracelet yet, and here’s why:

I half thought that I might be reading too much into this and that it possibly wasn’t intentional on the author’s behalf, but I don’t think that enough people seem to be grasping that James was very much sexually assaulted.

At multiple points, he thinks about he feels like he has no choice but to kiss Grace when she tells him to, and he quite literally doesn’t. He has no choice in this situation, he’s not allowed to think that he doesn’t want to kiss her, because he’s being compelled to follow her commands. There is no consent here.

After the bracelet is broken, we see how much he’s struggling with what happened, referring to it as what Grace “did to him”, and he quite literally can’t form the words to explain it even when he wants to tell Cordelia about it. He doesn’t want to be pitied for it, he doesn’t want to see the people he loves be hurt on his behalf over it, and if all of this doesn’t scream SA.

I understand that Grace was also a victim of abuse, and she herself was forced into a position where she had no choice except to do as her mother said, but I do not think that James, nor any of the people in his life, should feel that they need to excuse her actions on the basis of that.

James gazed around the room with dark golden eyes. Those eyes had once been able to melt Cordelia’s bones inside her body and turn her stomach to a mass of knots. Not anymore, she told herself firmly. Certainly not.

Girl, who do you think you’re convincing right now?

Unpaused this book but i'm starting to see why i paused it in the first place🫣