Assault, Consent, and Romance in Bound by Blood and Sand

Assault, Consent, and Romance in <I>Bound by Blood and Sand</i>

(Notes: This blog entry discusses rape culture, also, there are minor BBB&S spoilers.) It’s April, which is sexual assault awareness month. So I want to take a second to talk about sexual assault in Bound by Blood and Sand, because, well, it’s in there. Jae, the protagonist, is a survivor of rape before the book begins, and she’s assaulted about halfway through, on the page. Jae also has PTSD (from the assaults, and from a lifetime of slavery), something which is, of course, still part of her in Freed by Flame and Storm. I did not take the idea of

The YA Classics Catch Up Blogathon

The YA Classics Catch Up Blogathon

My name is Becky and I have a confession: I am a YA writer who is shamefully un-read in the classics of my own category. I’ve never read The Outsiders. I’ve never read A Separate Peace. And while I have read The Catcher in the Rye, it was only grudgingly for class, and I hated it. A little of this is because my school didn’t teach some of these. Mostly, though, it’s because I’ve always been drawn way more to genre books than contemporary (or books that were contemporary when they were written, decades ago). I like my pacing zippy