You’re Doing It Wrong.

Bert knows this is wrong.

You know when you hit upon something that’s just so jaw-droppingly, amazingly awful that you just have to inflict it on someone else?

(That was your only warning.)

The following came straight from a commercially-published paperback. I’ve cut a couple of words from the first line for clarity and to protect the guilty, but trust me, it’s pretty much unchanged, and the second line is verbatim.

love interest hero: “I hate [my illegitimate father]. He violated my mother and made my life a lie.”
love interest heroine: “I’m sure he had his reasons!”

Got that? Let’s take an audience survey.

 

Yeah, I thought so. Really? He raped a woman and left her pregnant, and she’s sure he had his reasons? Oookay. Let’s see, what might those reasons have been?

1. Boobs.
2. Big boobs.
3. Dat ass.
4. An utter lack of any sort of personal integrity, respect, or self-control.

But don’t worry, because by the end of the book, there’s a twist! Our hero only thought this guy raped his mother and abandoned her pregnant. In fact, it was consensual, and then he abandoned her pregnant. That makes it all okay and should solve all the hero’s daddy issues, right?

 

Yeah, that’s about what I thought.