Dance upon the air book review

I read Dance Upon the Air last August. It was at the beginning of my gigantic romance phase and since I was naive and innocent back then, I gave it 3 stars thinking it was a bit boring but "not too bad".

Now I know better than to give this anything more than 1 star and aggressively tap my Kindle until it is deleted.

Our heroine, Nell, faked her death to get away from her abusive husband. After being on the run for awhile, she feels drawn to Three Sisters Island so she settles down to start her new life. Blah blah, as a regular Mary Sue she is loved by all after just 1 day blah blah - the usual.

Then she meets Sheriff Zack Todd who's sweet and kind and sexy and who's supposed to heal her with the Power of Love™.

But wait!

Magic mirror, on the wall - who is the biggest dick of them all?

*GASP*

It's Zack!!!!

Congratulations Sheriff, please come collect your award while we look back on your lowest fucking moments!

(For context: so far Nell's been nervous and on edge every time they talked, she flinched when he touched her, had a panic attack when she thought people would be angry with her for forgetting to make a salad. Zack already put two and two together about her being abused.)

Page 90: Nell: "....I don't want you to get the wrong impression about dinner, and… things. I'm very attracted to you, but I'm not in a place where I can act on my feelings. It's only fair to tell you that up front. There are good reasons for it, but I'm not willing to get into them. So, if you'd rather just go, no hard feelings."Page 93: Zach: "I should tell you something else. I plan on touching you. A lot. Maybe you could work on getting used to it." "I don't like being handled." "I didn't plan to start out that way. Though handling, on both sides, can have some satisfying results. I don't put marks on women, Nell. I don't use my hands that way." "I'm not going to talk about that," she answered curtly. "I'm not asking you to. I'm talking about me, and you, and the way things are now." "Things aren't any way now—like that." "They're going to be."Page 95 (on the beach): He scooped her up so fast her heart stuck between her chest and her throat. She could barely manage to breathe, much less scream. Before full panic had a chance to bloom, she was in the water. Zack was laughing, spinning her away from an oncoming wave to take the brunt of it himself. She was sliding, rolling, fighting to gain her feet when he simply nipped her at the waist and righted her. "It's freezing." "Balmy," he corrected. "Your blood's just thin yet. Here comes a good-size one. You'd better hold on to me." "I don't want to—" Whatever she did or didn't want, the sea had its own ideas. The wave hit, knocked her off her feet, and had her legs tangling with his.

Page 131: "I'm not the mess I used to be," she said. "But I still have moments. Until I don't, I'm not prepared to complicate my life, or anyone else's." "That's sensible." "I'm going to concentrate on my work." "A person's got to have priorities." "There are things I want to do, things I need to learn. For myself." "....Uh-huh. In a minute." He yanked her against him, jerked her up to her toes, covered her mouth with his in a hot, possessive kiss.Page 151: "What're you doing?" She jumped like a rabbit at the sleep-roughened sound of his voice, and the coffee slopped over onto the paper. "Did I wake you? I'm sorry. I tried to be quiet." He held up a hand. "Nell, don't do that. It pisses me off." His voice was thick with sleep, and despite herself dread curled in her stomach as he stepped toward her. "There's one thing I'm going to ask you." He picked up her mug, drank to clear his mind and voice. "Don't ever mix me up with him. If you'd waked me up and it annoyed me, I would say so. But the fact is I woke up because you weren't there and I missed you." "Some habits are hard to break, no matter how much you try." "Well, keep trying." He said it lightly, moved over to the stove to pour a full mug for himself.

Page 211: "I'm sorry. Zack, I'm so sorry. I can't marry you." .... "I can't marry you, Zack, because I'm already married." Nothing she could have said would have stunned him more. "Married? You're married! For God's sake, Nell, we've been together for months." "I know." It wasn't just shock she saw now. It wasn't just anger. He stared at her as if she were a stranger. "I left him, you see. More than a year ago." He struggled over the first hurdle. The fact that she'd been married and hadn't told him. But he couldn't make it over the second. That she was married still. "Left him, but didn't divorce him." "No, I couldn't. I—" "And you let me touch you, you slept with me, let me fall in love with you, knowing you weren't free." (NOTE: she's been saying "no/let's slow down/I have reasons why a relationship is a bad idea for the past 200 pages) ... As his anger grew, hardened his face, she felt the strength she'd rebuilt draining away like the color in her cheeks. "You think that makes up for it?" he shot back, as temper and misery careened inside him. "You think taking the blame for it cleans the fucking slate on this? Goddamn it." He spun away from her and caught the way she flinched at the move. "I'll yell when I need to yell. You're only making me madder standing there like you're waiting for a punch. I'm not going to hit you. Not now, not ever. And it's insulting for you to stand there wondering if I will." "You don't know what it's like."

Page 217: (Zack being a fucking hypocrite) "I'm not going to make her do anything, not only because I don't work that way but because I have a feeling the man she's married to did plenty of making her."Page 222 (last one, I promise): (After emotionally blackmailing Nell into telling him about her abuse) "When he hit me… the first time it was a shock. No one had ever hit me before. I should've left, right that minute. Or tried. He would never have let me, but I should've tried. But I'd only been married a few months, and somehow he made me feel I'd deserved it. For being stupid. Or clumsy. Or forgetful. For all manner of things. He trained me like a dog. I'm not proud of that."

(And then immediately he goes:)

"I had a right to know, when things changed between us. I had a right to know." "I didn't expect things to change between us." "But they damn well did. And if you didn't know where we were heading, then you are stupid."

(Nell tells him not to call her stupid and continues with:)

"I'm telling you how it is. I did a lot of thinking since you walked out of the house yesterday. I'm not going to whimper and slide into the corner just because you're annoyed with me. That insults both of us." "Well, three cheers." "Oh, go to hell." He turned completely around and stepped toward her. The dread curled in her stomach, her palms went clammy, but she stood her ground. "It's a hell of a time to pick a fight with me, especially when you're wrong."

And this book actually has a 4.2 rating??? I genuinely cannot understand how people could overlook Zack's behaviour.

Fucking scary.

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