Book Recap: Moonlit Obsession, Chapters 6 and 7

Hello, dear readers.

I tried making a Countdown to Final Crisis joke in this intro because things keep going downhill in a wheelbarrow that's also on fire, but the only thing that comes to mind is "Welcome to pain" and I'm not hunting down the comic just to see if I'm not misquoting that.

This is one of the bad ones, folks: there's still enough dumb to pass around and marvel at, but I've gotta give y'all a heads up before we hold our noses and do a cannonball into the septic tank.

Warning: today's recap involves the love interest getting physically abusive with the heroine, as well as being intensely creepy and threatening her with harm repeatedly. Alas, this fuckery is necessary to the """plot""" of this book, so I can't sidestep it. Take care, gentle readers.

Grab all your fluffy animal videos, everyone, because here we go.

Pictured: me and this book.

 

Chapter 6: Super Mega Spying

Previously in Moonlit Obsession: Lord Pelham was murdered and that made me very sad; then the SUPER MEGA SPYING reached some truly impressive new lows and that made me very happy, because it gave me something to point and laugh at. We left Anemone standing above a dead body and holding the murder weapon, making a sacrifice of her braincells (and mine) on the altar of a mysterious deity named Plot Contrivance as she searched for clues; then Burke came in and reacted to all this the way I expect him to react to pretty much anything, by freaking me the fuck out.

So when Flower Vehiclesteps destroys the paper Burke was looking for, because... clowns, I don't know, he knocks her aside (...cool) and reaches into the fireplace but fails to grab it in time. Then someone says "Fool! Idiot!" and I don't know which of the characters is calling the kettle black because it doesn't have a dialogue tag. Maybe it's the narrator finally having enough of this farce. Anemone yells at Burke for putting his hand into the fire, and he in response whirls around and "twisted the pistol away before she even remembered she held it" and wow, I'm barely a paragraph into the recap, but the time has already come for another...

SUPER MEGA SPY!

Burke rounds on Anemone and grabs her so tight that her eyes start watering from the pain, oh, the romance. He demands to know what the paper said, calls her a bitch – swoon... actually, no, screw it, I'm not dignifying this book with that even for a joke – and Anemone refuses to tell him. She tries to say she's never heard of the Belvidere even though she was very obviously reading the damn paper just now.

SUPER MEGA SPY!

Then he freaks me the fuck out again because he yanks on her arms so hard that Anemone shouts in pain, and...

Satisfaction showed in his face.

I swear I want to stage an intervention for this entire novel because Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is this messed up.

Burke seductively informs Anemone that he's willing to kill her to get the intel – wait, wrong word, I meant horrifyingly – and that he thinks she killed Lord Pelham because he literally found her with the murder weapon in her hand. Keep up the good work, ma'am. Instead of trying to bargain or turn the situation in her favor, she's just hanging there like a ragdoll and letting him threaten her. Really, really don't want to victim-blame here, but I have a mouth and I must scream.

SUPER MEGA SPY!

Christ on a slice of toast, she thinks he's an enemy spy and it doesn't even occur to her to just lie to him right now. I'm a better spy than her and the closest I've come to covert missions was watching You Only Live Twice because Tetsuro Tamba was in it!

Burke yanks on Anemone's hair and threatens her some more in a sexy way – wait, wrong word, I meant in a fucking terrifying way – but they're interrupted when they hear Cecilia coming home from Whereverthehell. Burke decides there's no help for it now except to drag Anemone with him before everyone wakes up from their plot convenience-induced coma, and... flatter the intel out of her. Yeah. Totally. He's gonna serenade her with flowers and chocolate and baby alligators until she talks. Let's go with that.

She didn't know what to do, how to salvage herself or her mission.

Letting that one speak for itself too so I don't wear out my Caps Lock voice.

Out in the street, Anemone tries to karate-chop her way free again, but much like Princess Halo, she can fight only when it has no bearing on the plot at all and Burke easily holds her down. He then tells her that if she chooses to face the law over killing Lord Pelham it will be more pleasant for her than what he's planning, but SIKE he's actually giving her no choice in the matter. ARGH DO NOT WANT SOMEONE LOCK HIM UP.

Do you see now why I keep bringing up Burke and Hare?!

While I'm building a barbed-wire cage for this fucking book so Burke won't come out of it to eat my face when I'm asleep, he drags Anemone into a hackney and they take off for the harbor. He threatens her some more and there are only so many ways to say that he's making Jason Voorhees look like Graham Norton in comparison, so I'm ignoring it. Anemone still can't figure any way out of this mess, and I'll have to borrow a quote from a Hungarian book blog as to my opinion on that: if you leaned in close to this woman, you'd hear the neuron in her head screaming out its loneliness.

Anemone then heroically decides that he can kill her if he wants but she's not telling him a single thing and I repeat: book!England is so losing this war if THIS is what their top spy operates like in the field. Buffalo Burke then laughs at her and freaks me the fuck out in farewell by calling her "my pet".

If you're thinking of jumping ship, dear readers: I know the stupid dumb has switched to horrifying dumb in the past few chapters... but it won't be long now until it turns into just plain funny dumb. Hang in there. Mostly because I need y'all with me to dilute the curse if I want to keep recapping.

Please enjoy this photo of our dog yawning singing opera as stress relief.

O SOLE MIOOOOO

 

Chapter 7: A Devastating Common Sense Injury

This chapter starts with Burke's ship, the Sea Lion, leaving the London harbor while Burke and Anemone have themselves a face-off in the captain's cabin. The face-off is not the Nicolas Cage movie with that title where he makes a bunch of funny faces, sadly; the only one doing that here is me as I read this. But Anemone then gives me some welcome relief from the fuckery, by making me laugh very hard while headdesking.  

 

She tried to guess what her father would do in such a circumstance. But all she could think of was what he had said when she had once asked him about getting caught. Don't had been Thomas Carstairs's sharp admonition [...].

 

Well, at least we know where she gets it from.
 

Once I'm done laughing, Anemone yanks me right back into the pain by saying that Burke has hurt and threatened her to the point where all she can feel for him now is hate, and I despair because I know they'll end up falling in love after... that. Despite what she just said, Anemone then goes on to wax poetic about Burke's muscularicious body and his Old Spice deodorant "raw male energy" while he's doing his best to creep her (and me) out even worse. You do that, ma'am. He then takes a page from the Carstairs Family Handbook of Spying, outright telling her that he's tracking the Belvidere and needs her intel to chart their course, which would give any competent enemy spy with half a brainstem in their head even more reason to lie to him. Then she taunts him, and he calls her a bitch again because this book has some very interesting notions about romance.

Anemone decides to try and outwit him if she can't fight him physically – congratulations on that breakthrough – and tries to play the helpless swooning female, but the author sneaks in some character shilling about as subtly as Michael Myers bursting through a window to grab Laurie, as Stephen says that she's too brave and capable to sell the act and... he'll just have to hurt her some more until she talks. Okay then. Only now does Anemone try to give him fake intel; she calls herself "an expert at deception" and I laughed very hard again because Burke sees through her immediately. Then I stopped laughing because he hits her in the face, and there is nothing else to discuss other than that this book is an insult to the concept of romance, so I'm moving on for the sake of everyone's cardiovascular health.

Buffalo Burke finally realizes where they met before and it's perfectly pointless to the plot, so I'm not discussing that either. Anemone faints like the helpless little wimminz she is and... 

SUPER MEGA SPY!

 

Just on principle.

Burke pours his victim a brandy, then the first mate pokes his head into the cabin, and shows the barest sliver of sanity and common decency by being alarmed at the sight of a bruised, unconscious woman in his captain's cabin. The second he opens his mouth, though, he loses all my goodwill by saying that Burke knows what he's doing and that the crew are all aflutter over having a woman on board. He thinks that his womanizing captain will soon seduce the BRUISED, UNCONSCIOUS woman he's seeing in the cabin now, then flounces and leaves Burke to his business.

Now that they've sailed, I wish this entire cast a very pleasant Kraken encounter.

While the fresh round of fuckery is going on, Anemone comes to and decides to pour a few drops of laudanum into Burke's brandy – not even the whole vial, just a few drops. SUPER MEGA– wait, no, I think this is just plain old research failure. Carry on with the dumb, ma'am.

Alas for my sanity, the expert at deception can't fool Burke into drinking something that would have no effect on him whatsoever in an actual realistic story, because he saw her putting away the vial, and he insists on giving her the laced brandy. Anemone gives the game away immediately by refusing to drink it, and I think my desk really won't survive my encounter with this... 

SUPER MEGA SPY!

 

Burke forces Anemone to drink the brandy and she informs him that he just knocked her out because it was only murder mystery chloroform... I mean, laudanum, but he threatens to lock her in the hold, and her claustrophobia bursts through and shows itself very clearly to him before she falls asleep. 

SUPER MEGA SPY!

 

Sorry. That keeps slipping out. Don't know why, she's doing great so far.

Once Anemone's unconscious, Burke realizes that he might have been a bit harsh (YA THINK?!), so he takes off her uncomfortable maid outfit and stares at her boobs while she's sleeping... uh, I mean, he's bewitched by her vulnerable beauty. He doesn't do anything else, though, which is lucky, because I don't want to bang this book against the wall if I can help it – I might hurt the wall. He asks her the rhetorical question of who she is, and she starts muttering in her sleep and gives him her name. Yeah. Aside from the fact that Anemone had a devastating common sense injury just before starting this book... apparently she's also claustrophobic and talks in her sleep. 

SUPER MEGA SPY!

 

Sorry if that's getting annoying. It's because I'm annoyed.

Buffalo Burke ends this chapter by – say it with me – freaking me the fuck out.

"Sleep well while you can."

Yeah, know who's not gonna sleep well after reading that? ME.

See you next time, gentle readers. Please enjoy another goblin dog as the only respite I can offer from the pain.

 

Ears.