A Dark and Surprisingly Deep Rom-Com That’s Not For The Faint of Heart . . . But Totally Worth It - An ARC Review of The Art of Marrying Your Enemy by Alina Jacobs

I know. I know. I sing her praises every time I read a new Alina Jacobs' book but the woman just gets me. I read her, admittedly, bat-shit crazy stories and find myself simultaneously laughing and crying and, more often than not, turning beet-red since her sex scenes reach Carolina Reaper level on the Scoville scale of smut. So, when her author’s note read “this book is probably the spiciest thing I’ve ever written” and noted what chapters (35 and 36, by the by) to skip to get out of the proverbial kitchen if you can’t stand the heat, I was agog and tempted to go right to those very chapters to see if they lived up to this trigger warning, of sorts. I didn’t but let me tell you, pearl clutchers need not apply. Hot damn!

Jacobs picks up the thread of the Richmond Brothers’ darkest of all timelines backstory - their father serially kidnapped, abducted and raped their then-teenage mothers and forced them to spend the first decade or so of their lives in the basement, a la Room - with Aaron, CFO and general douchebag. With a backstory like his, however, a lot can be forgiven. If you haven’t met him or his brothers before (Grayson’s story kicks things off in The Art of Awkward Affection and they’ve made cameos in other recent Jacobs’ stories), the trauma is deep and, TBH, is a lot for a rom-com. Be that as it may, I love the beautiful broken boy trope as much as Jacobs seemingly loves writing it. So does our literary heroine, spoiled “princess” trust fund baby, Victorian fanfic writer, and coffee slinger / PhD candidate in early American literature: Daisy Coleman. There are clear Gatsby vibes here - this book is Jacobs’ most meta to date - but where Daisy Buchanan is a stone cold bitch who deserves no kindness from her audience (fight me on this), this Daisy is a hot mess virgin pushing thirty who’s been saving herself for her teen obsession / tortured boy-next-door, Aaron. The whole grew-up-in-the-basement-and-no-one-can-acknowledge-his-trauma aside, Aaron’s got so many red flags that he’s a veritable Christo art installation. Grumpy lone-wolf desperately seeking love from the very family that wishes his mother had drowned him in the toilet (yikes!) doesn’t even touch upon his darkest corners. 

Unable to face the trauma that his wealthy relatives simply pretend doesn’t exist, Aaron’s secret is the windowless basement he’s built - reached via Gothic secret passageways, of course - and finds recluse in. There’s no surprise that his dark moments - which definitely outshine any bright ones - stem from the self-loathing that he’s had since the moment he was violently brought into the world. Accordingly, his fear that he is a monster in the same vein as his father is very real and even more difficult to read than his brother’s similar dilemma in The Art of Awkward Affection. These fears manifest themselves in the chains that he’s built into this dungeon. It’s not just a dungeon, however. It’s a - you guessed it - sex dungeon, built for the loving denigration of one woman and one woman alone: Daisy, his own green light, as it were. The summer sunshine that he’s worshipped from afar. Thus, we’ve got love / hate on both sides of the equation and when Aaron’s grandfather asks him to marry Daisy to salvage her uselessly wealthy family’s coffers, he agrees in the hopes that it buys him a reprieve from his own family's crushing disdain. 

We’ve seen this forced marriage trope many a time before, obviously, and Jacobs is no stranger to it herself. However, it’s so very fitting here, as Daisy, waving as many big red flags as Aaron does, fantasizes about her nemesis / soulmate stealing into her bedroom, forcibly taking her virginity, and claiming her body and soul. It's all she's ever fantasized about and he's the only man she's ever loved . . . until she doesn't (but still really does even though she won't admit it). Hence our enemies-to-lovers trope that works so well for the first half of the novel because, man, are these two committed to making each others' lives miserable.

If you, like me, can ignore the rampant red flags that fly on behalf of both of the title enemies, who are forced into a month-long relationship via a Victorian marriage contract that enables Daisy to save her family's failing company and Aaron to prove to his own that his mother was right to NOT drown him as a baby (see? DARK!), this is one of Jacobs' most compelling books yet, offering a look into inter-generational trauma. Those red flags that both Aaron and Daisy waive have their roots in their shared summers in the Hamptons. She, a Gothic novel obsessed teen and trust-fund princess, was convinced the traumatized boy next door was her one true love, meant to ravage her and claim her for the rest of their days. He, a fish so very out of water, fell equally into obsession the moment he saw her upon release from his windowless prison - the sunshine he literally never felt until he spent more than a decade on this earth. 

Granted, enemies to lovers is not the trope for everyone. Here, however, it's so much more potent as each of the main characters is sacrificing themselves to save their families and is equally unable to move past the teenage misunderstandings that they foisted on one another.

As mentioned, this book also brings spice to a new level. Aaron's sex dungeon is just the tip of the iceberg and Daisy's desire to live out her own wife in the attic (or, more accurately, basement) fantasies are not for everyone. (For the record, I’m here for it but also wholeheartedly acknowledge the cringe factor). Yet, the pain that both these characters - especially Aaron - suffers is poignant and a surprisingly thoughtful treatise on the sins of the father that poison the well for generations to come. I laughed, cried, and really questioned humanity and its capacity for change - something that's not usually on my bingo card when reading rom-coms - and am eagerly awaiting the next Richmond brother's tale, though it would have to be something to surpass this story. Keep ‘em coming, Alina!

Rating: 4.5 / 5 Sex Dungeon Sessions