Review Detail of Aeris_1357 in Sweet Beauty

It’s pretty good. The pacing is decent and the story is well done. The characters are fleshed out and interesting. However, there is a glaring contradiction in the Female Lead’s character and a fatal flaw in the Male Lead’s character that I can’t get over and prevents me from enjoying the story. The female lead is reborn, her backstory and character are wonderful, after being betrayed she isn’t willing to suffer in silence and has a deep distrust of men, she is strong, independent, and capable, and ready to make her voice heard …And then she literary allows herself to be sexually harassed and taken advantage of over and over again. It doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t need a man, she doesn’t want a man, she doesn’t trust men, but on their first meeting he takes advantage of an injured woman, in a hospital, and she doesn’t scream for someone to come over? She just lets a strange man kiss her and walk away? Why? Because he’s rich? Because he helped someone willing to jump out of a car on the highway? Wealth is not a free-pass for horrid behavior, and I think anyone who witnessed someone roll out of a car would stop and try to help. He makes clearly unfair, morally and legally dubious arrangements in her housing and employment, and she doesn’t think it’s a problem? She’s obviously quite intelligent. Why doesn’t she find any issue with a 20 year contract she has no power to cancel? Anyone with a brain would realize that isn’t employment, it’s indentured servitude. And this is the male lead’s fatal flaw. He repeatedly forces himself on a woman who makes it known to him by both word and deed that she rejects and is uncomfortable with his actions, but immediately justifies himself that it’s all in the name of pursuing his love. It happens repeatedly. He makes a move, she resists, he restrains her and continues. The male lead is irredeemably selfish and refuses to control himself because he doesn’t want too. His self-righteousness under the banner of love is disgusting. I’m not saying he shouldn’t or couldn’t pursue her, but his overbearing manner of not giving her a choice in the matter is unacceptable. It is violence. No matter what, it is not okay to disregard the intentions of your partner regardless of gender. Am I interested in finishing the story? Yes. Will I be finishing it? No. Personally, I don’t feel comfortable condoning the romanticism of gender discrimination and sexual crimes. Perhaps this is a cultural difference, but it feels wrong to me to portray this kind of behavior as romantic or even remotely loving. If you really love someone, you should respect them and their boundaries.