I don’t know how I fell down the Dark Romance rabbit hole (much less how to climb out), but here I am. I was late to the party on Gothikana and Haunting Adeline, and honestly I’m late to the party on this one too, but Carving for Cara was too good to pass up.

Please note: I’m using “good” in that sentence in much the same way I’d use it to refer to 80s YA horror. It’s good as an exemplar of its own category, not “good” in any sort of literary way. Carving for Cara isn’t just a Dark Romance: it may be the ultimate expression of its own category.

I think you could actually use this book to distill the pure elements of Dark Romance and write your own, and I’m tempted to do just that.

I mean, truly: It’s MAGNIFICENT. I think I sustained a concussion reading it.

It is also, and this will probably be true of any other Dark Romances I might recap, very inappropriate for children, inappropriate for work, and kind of rape-y. People throw around the term “consensual non-consent” a lot when they discuss Dark Romance, but the “consent” part must be so subtle it just flies right over my head, because all I’m seeing are boundary transgressions up to and including rape, with no conversations or anything that would set up the consent.

And I’m not even saying that as a criticism. I think that, basically, this flavour of book is a rape fantasy in print, with heavy emphasis on the fantasy, and setting up scenes with discussions around consent would turn it into a slightly different, less terrifying, flavour of thing. It’s okay to want this kind, not the other kind. It’s a novel, not a guide to relationships, and I’m going to give adult readers the benefit of the doubt and assume most of them can tell the difference.

I enjoyed reading this. I just want to be very clear going in that this isn’t for everyone, and even reviewing it is going to touch on stuff that many people would prefer not to read, and by “stuff” I mostly mean the rape but also the stalking, murder, and some minor bloodletting in the context of stalking and rape. So just know that going in, and don’t continue with this post if you would rather not read that.

Quick and Dirty: A too-special-to-live heroine suffering from chronic Not Like the Other Girls-itis is stalked by a psychotic multiple murderer, only it’s a romance and everything smells like pumpkin spice.

Now Slow It Down:

We start with the obligatory list of trigger warnings, and then the equally obligatory playlist. (Not throwing shade, and I approve of the list of both of those, but I remember when neither of those were a thing in published fiction). Then we have the most amazing dedication page in the history of TikTok videos, which I won’t spoil for you, but it does sum up a major scene in the novella. Maybe I’ll include it after I get to that scene?

The first sentence tells us everything you could ever want to know about our heroine:

An icy breeze stings my pale, tattooed skin as I hold my favorite purple lighter inside the final unlit jack-o’-lantern showcased on my front porch.

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You guys, Cara isn’t like everybody else in her dull, boring town. She has six elaborate carved pumpkins on her front porch, and some headstones, and red lights that flash in time to her “Monster Jams” playlist, and a dry ice machine. So there! Not like the rest of the normies:

Most people in my small town of Hallow Grove, Iowa, are superstitious and fearful of the devil, but after reading one too many dark romance novels, I’m reasonably certain he’d fuck like a god.

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I love that the authors made the thing that the reader is doing right now–reading a dark romance novel–part of Cara’s personality. She’s JUST LIKE YOU, reader, and you’re both way unique and shit. Not like those boring normies who…named their town Hallow Grove?

Ignore that, I’m sure it’s nothing. Cara is not like the other girls, and most people in her town are religious and boring, okay, not like her Halloween-loving dark-romance-reading self.

My modest Victorian-style home sits on the quiet corner of October Lane and Cemetery Circle.

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I had to put down the kindle and laugh for a solid minute after reading that. So Cara is, essentially, a pumpkin spice latte swilling Basic Bitch who thinks she’s hardcore because she listens to a metal remix of “This is Halloween” and reads books like this one. Got it.

Also she’s a tattoo artist who was somehow able to afford to buy a house because no one else wanted a “gothic grey and black house” on the corner of some streets with spooky names. In this economy? That’s literally the most unrealistic part of the entire book.

She’s feeling nervous and out of sorts because she knows Jonah, her sort-of-ex boyfriend, will be there tonight at the Devil’s Night party. OH MY GOD. Literally everyone in this town is obsessed with Halloween, and she’s still somehow living with the delusion that she stands out in any way from everyone else.

Anyway, she and Jonah have broken up (she mentions verbal abuse among other reasons), but they’re still meeting up for casual sex whenever one of them wants it. Hold that thought, because once they have sex you’ll be left wondering how she could ever possibly want it.

They’re keeping these hook-ups a secret, because Cara has an obligatory bestie with a drinking problem who would not approve.

SLOAN pops up on the caller ID, accompanied by the most humorous picture of my best friend passed out drunk in my bathtub, and I smirk, quickly forgetting how anxious I’ve been all day.

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Sloan is going to literally die if she doesn’t “get a pumpkin spice latte in me RIGHT NOW” so they head to Rustic Roast to do that.

“They better not be out of pumpkin syrup this time!” I whine into the phone as I dip my hand back into the jack-o’-lantern.

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She spends a few pages lighting the damned thing, while letting us know that Sloan is one of the town’s hairdressers so she knows ALL the gossip, like which of “the shallow people of Hallow Grove” are having affairs. I’m sorry: it is physically impossible to be any more shallow than these two women. Biofilms clinging to your teeth have more depth.

Juan, the barista, has set aside pumpkin lattes for Sloan and Cara, and says they’re on the house, saying that “after the last time” he figured they’d kill him otherwise. These women are NIGHTMARES. Cara smiles at Juan, impressed, little realizing she’s endangering him via normal human interaction.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First we have our Meet Cute, only it’s a Meet Crazy and they don’t actually meet, they just set eyes on each other.

As she and Sloan are about to sit down, Cara sees a handsome man with “sharp facial features and tattooed skin.” He’s so handsome she sucks her lip between her teeth and…

My knees begin to wobble, weakening as I clench my thighs together mid-step, seeking relief from the pressure building between them.

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It was at this point that I began to wonder if what I was reading was actually a parody. Like, what if the authors deliberately stripped out the quintessential dark romance tropes, turned them up to eleven, and then presented it to the world?

Sloan notes this interaction and is amused in an approving kind of way, which tells us he’s the hero, because it’s the job of the Bestie with a Drinking Problem to disapprove of any man who isn’t the hero (and sometimes also of the hero, but only until she gets to know him).

In passing we also learn that Sloan thinks Cara’s house is haunted, which feels very Haunting Adeline but is never mentioned again. Sloan is hoping to cross paths with Alex, her current crush, and we get the first of many little digs intended to show that Sloan is less heroine-worthy than Cara:

He’s also filthy rich, and I swear, sometimes all she sees are dollar signs when she looks at men.

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Sloan also embarrasses Cara by saying, loudly, that Cara’s vibrator will break if she doesn’t give it a break and get laid. Two seconds ago Cara was thigh-clenching in the middle of the coffeeshop because she saw a cute guy, but sure: she embarrasses easily. Let’s go with that.

Chapter Two is from Rhett’s point of view. He’s the handsome, tattooed, deranged hero who is, for unfathomable reasons, using a cafe’s “shitty Wi-Fi” for his job. That might not seem like a big deal , but what he’s doing is “trying to hack into an overseas bank account the local Don Leon Cartel has been using,” and I don’t know, that seems like something I wouldn’t be using free public wi-fi for. Maybe I’m just picky.

He drives a super-cool motorcycle because of course he does, and he’s insta-jealous because Cara smiles at the barista:

All it takes is one look, a split second where another man holds her attention, to send me into a downward spiral of jealousy and rage. I never want her to smile at anyone else like that again, unless it’s me.

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She literally hasn’t even seen him yet.

Rhett finds out her name because it’s been written on her paper coffee cup, and then over-reacts a whole lot:

No, she’s different.

She’s special, she sees me.

Accepts me.

….

Fuck. This girl wants me.

The metal barb of my Jacob’s Ladder piercing rubs against the confinement of my tight black skinny jeans as my cock hardens at the subtle, incredibly sexy gesture.

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That’s reading a whole lot into someone sucking their bottom lip and smiling at you. I mean, I get that he can tell she’s attracted to him, but all “she sees me…understands me” stuff sounds literally like a deranged stalker. Well done making him sound straight from the pages of an abnormal psych textbook.

Rhett also has really healthy self-esteem (again, to the point that I keep wondering if this is a deliberate parody):

I can’t blame her for being so speechless after locking eyes with me. I know I’m good-looking and taller than most men, a feature I can thank my late father for; add in that all of my free time is spent at the gym, where I work hard to maintain my well-toned body, and it doesn’t take much for women to swoon over me.

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I’m swooning too, but in my case it’s with hysterical laughter.

There’s literally several more paragraphs of how women want him, he fucks a lot of them, etc., but with the important caveat that this one is different and it won’t be enough just to fuck her. Because she sees and accepts him or whatever, he needs to own her and “break” her. The number of times he mentions breaking or ruining her had me half convinced that the book would end with her being murdered.

He starts writing down everything she says to Sloan (the better to stalk you with, my dear!), gets jealous when she says Jonah’s name, and resents Sloan for pressuring her to attend the party tonight. This man has a LOT of emotions.

He uses satellite maps to pinpoint the location of the road and lake she mentions so he can show up at the party tonight, even pulling up the deed to the property so he can see who owns it. Why can he do all this?

Being a white hat hacker for the CIA has its benefits.

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I. Am. Dead.

His job description is another reason I wonder if this isn’t a clever send-up of Dark Romance as a genre and Haunting Adeline in particular. Also Rhett has a nickname for Cara: Little Nightmare. I don’t know what’s supposed to be scary about her, other than how demanding she is when it comes to pumpkin spice lattes, but okay, sure.

Another little dig at Sloan for being more into the gossip than Cara (she seemed plenty into it in chapter one, though), and then Sloan flirts with the barista:

I know her type, the tryhards with low self-esteem, who flaunt what they have to get what they want, and if you refuse, they try harder.

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That is a really awful snap judgement, and Rhett is now officially a jackass. I mean he was already a crazy stalker, but he’s not even likeable anymore.

Cara seductively makes eye contact with Rhett and lets some pumpkin sweet cream drip down her lips, then sucks it off her finger, but he doesn’t call her try hard, because she’s the heroine. The imagine of a fully adult woman acting crudely seductive with her latte in the middle of a cafe is hilarious, though.

Juan thanks Rhett for visiting the Rustic Roast, as a friendly barista would, and Rhett glares at him and imagines “how good it would feel to filet the smile from his lips” because Juan had the audacity to be friendly with Cara. I keep having to shut my Kindle so I can laugh.

Rhett also smokes and has a sterling silver zippo lighter that he inherited from his father, who was killed by that cartel (who will play absolutely no role in this book, but I assume they’ll show up in book two and kidnap Cara). Every single element of this feels familiar. Rhett is the ultimate distillation of a whole lot of tropes, and I kind of love it.

He buys a scarecrow costume, and thinks a lot of predator/prey/my little nightmare thoughts. You know the drill.

Chapter three opens on Cara and Sloan getting ready for their night out. Sloan owns lots more expensive makeup than Cara but still borrows Cara’s and then casually tosses it around the way she does her own, so, you know: another strike against her I guess.

Cara is dressed as a slutty angel:

It’s a cheaply made silky white bra equipped with double padding to make my tits look extra perky. A small set of silver feather wings are attached to my back, doing little to cover the excessive amount of skin I’m showing. My mini skirt matches the bra perfectly, covering my ass just enough to give horny party-goers a little show. Underneath my skirt, I’ve pulled on opaque thigh-high tights complete with diamond rhinestones. My tattoos are still visible through the sheer tights, and I like the way the diamonds shine against my own artwork.

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She has opaque tights that are also sheer? What?

Never mind. Anyway, Sloan is dressed with equal taste and subtlety as a slutty devil. Yay.

Cara decides she needs a shot of liquid courage so they each throw back a shot of tequila before leaving.

It’s cold outside, but neither of them wants to cover up their costume with a jacket. I’m not their mom but I really, really think they should be wearing more clothes.

Chapter four brings us back to Rhett, who is downloading all of Cara’s social media and reading her conversations with friends, family, and clients. How romantic.

He describes his rental apartment, his microwave dinner, his need to clean the kitchen and do dishes because he hates messes, and his shower, all in great detail and all without moving the plot forward at all. His Jacob’s Ladder has six piercings, if you were wondering.

My next release will be with my little nightmare, ruined and crying on my cock, begging me to stop while I fill her with my cum.

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Charming.

At least he’s dressed for the weather, in black jeans, a black tee, and his “favorite leather jacket.” He’s also carrying his favorite blade, Mori, and a scarecrow mask, so I guess he’s all set.

The guy hosting the party at his lake house has “fancy lights and top of the line stereo systems,” so Rhett wonders if he’s compensating for something. Sure, you Rebel Without a Clue, he’s the one fronting.

Cara and Sloan arrive, and he sees her costume and leaps to the most deranged conclusion possible:

She wanted to stand out. She wanted to make it easy for me to find her in the crowds of people as if she didn’t stand out already.

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Again: that does sound impressively like the way a stalker would interpret everything his victim does as somehow centred on him. Well done.

Sloan and Cara grab a few drinks each, and he follows them around the party. At some point a guy approaches Sloan, and after discussing it with Cara Sloan goes into the house with him, so now Cara is alone. Eventually Cara also goes in the house, where she sets down a beer bottle and throws back three plastic cups of punch. I’m starting to worry she’ll die of alcohol poisoning, but Rhett just watches with a “proud smile” for some reason.

Jonah shows up in a pumpkin mask, and leads Cara into a bedroom. Rhett is following them, and watches through the barely-open door as they have lousy sex. This is…weird.

They stop beside the bed, and my girl’s perky little tits bounce as the bastard slams her back against the wall. My mouth waters at the sight of her–so goddamn delicious.

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I kept waiting for Rhett to save her, or murder Jonah, or murder them both. But no. He just watches.

In chapter five we get all of that–the drinking, Sloan heading off with Alex, and the lousy sex–from Cara’s point of view, only now we know she’s been freezing cold all night, slugging back even more liquor than it sounded like, and feeling like someone’s watching her. Also, we have the inside scoop on exactly how bad the sex is.

His whiny bitch noises increase with his speed, and I’m doing everything I can to keep the best poker face possible. My back slams into the wall repeatedly as he cries out into my cheek, sweating as he thrusts.

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Delightful.

I open my mouth to protest, trying to push myself to my feet, but I’m too drunk to use my limbs. Jonah immediately busts his load, shooting it all over my face and open mouth. I squeeze my eyes shut as quickly as I can, but my eyelashes are already coated in his cum.

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So she doesn’t get off and her hair and makeup are ruined by the time she cleans up. Why, exactly, is she bothering to hook up with this guy? Although we get a partial answer to that, since she herself thinks “fuck alcohol” for making her “do the most fucked up shit.”

After she cleans up, Cara has two more shots and then sees people bobbing for apples. She decides to take a turn, since that will give her an excuse for why her hair is wet and her mascara ruined. Someone grabs the back of her neck and holds her down, causing her to panic, and when he lets her go this turns out to be Jonah’s idea of a joke. So she decides she’s never going to fuck him again, a very belated but clearly good decision.

She also sees a man in a scarecrow mask, watching her.

Chapter six, and we’re back with Rhett, who is feeling hilariously angry and betrayed:

How could she let him touch her? I thought we both felt something in our moment at Rustic Roast.

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Yes: how very dare she when you made eye contact twice. The nerve.

He’s fingering his knife (that’s not a euphemism) and remembering how Jonah came all over her face, like she was his, and how he could tell she didn’t even finish. He vows to make sure Jonah “won’t have the ability to let down any other women,” which sounds like he’s either going to castrate him or educate him in The Art of the Sexing. Wax on, wax off?

Sloan rejoins Cara and he overhears that she’s called an Uber. So he does some super hacker stuff, steals a car, and shows up as their Uber driver, cleverly disguised in a red hoodie.

The car immediately fills with her vanilla cinnamon scent. My eyes flutter, rolling back as I inhale deeply, taking a hit of what’s mine.

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That’d be my cue to climb right the fuck back out of the car, but they’re too drunk to notice. He drives them to Cara’s house and carries them both up to the porch, where he sets Sloan down and she unlocks the door. He carries Cara inside, Sloan hanging onto him for support, and Cara wakes up enough to invite him to another party tomorrow night.

Then the girls both pass out on the couch, and he covers Cara with a blanket and then installs three micro-cameras before leaving. Oh, sorry, “three small micro cameras,” as opposed to large micro-cameras, I guess.

He also steals a pair of her panties that he finds on the floor.

She left these here on purpose.

She wanted them to be found.

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Then he heads back to the party to look for Jonah.

Chapter seven is still more of Rhett’s point of view. Disappointingly, he does not open a Sex Academy and teach Jonah the error of his ways. He finds Jonah chatting up a girl in a sexy cop uniform, but her friend pulls her away.

I grin, thankful I won’t have to waste another two minutes of my life watching him plow through a second girl tonight.

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You know, Rhett, you didn’t have to watch him the first time. No one made you. That was a choice you made, a creepy creepy choice but entirely your own.

Jonah heads outside, to a firepit away from the crowds of people. I mean, it must be really really really far away if no one notices what happens next, but whatever.

Rhett joins Jonah at the firepit, and they share a joint, and then Rhett stabs him to death. Then Rhett cuts his head off, and drags the body into the lake, filling Jonah’s trench coat pockets with rocks to make sure he sinks. Returning to the fire–and the head–Rhett sits for a while, carving the head into a sort of jack-o’-lantern, and then takes the head and Jonah’s pumpkin mask with him.

Absolutely no one at the party notices any of this.

Cara and Sloan wake up very hungover. Sloan pukes for a while. They have an honest conversation about Jonah, because someone at the party told Sloan last night that Cara was with him, and she’s disappointed but also hurt that Cara was hiding this from her. It’s the most human and relatable either of them have been, and actually made me almost like them.

They decide to spend the day eating pizza and tacos (okay, Sloan isn’t human at all if she can have this conversation right after throwing up) and watching Halloween movies.

“Deal,” I confirm. “We need to absorb the rest of the alcohol in our systems so we can start fresh tonight.”

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That is absolutely terrible reasoning. Slow down. You’re going to die before your stalker even gets to you.

She does, however, say they need to arrange a cab ahead of time because it’s kind of creepy that neither of them can remember how they got home last night. YES, YES IT IS.

Rhett spends all day watching them via the cameras (chapter eight is his point of view again) and sniffing Cara’s stolen panties. He’s ignored six calls from the agent in charge of the case he’s working, so I’m hoping he gets fired. We also get some paper-thin backstory about the whole CIA-cartel thing:

Jose killed my father, murdered him in cold blood twelve years ago, and since joining the CIA I’ve spent every minute I could working the case. I have spent any chance I can to get a lead, to get something I can use to bring him down, or to kill him myself. For the first time in my life, someone means more to me than revenge for my father’s death. That brief connection we shared at the cafe turned my entire world upside down, and now the only one I care about watching, the only lead I care about, is her. My little nightmare.

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Are…are you kidding me? This absolutely HAS to be a parody. I mean, I hate to defend Zade, but at least he didn’t quit his day job the minute he started stalking his little mouse.

“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to…hey, that hot girl just made eye contact with me!”

Anyway, whatever. Cara and Sloan are going to a party at a cornfield, so he watches them leave on-camera, then heads (pun absolutely intended) over to Cara’s house to leave a gift on her front porch. He also thinks some insane bullshit about how she obviously went to extra effort decorating her house this year for him, specifically, even though she did all this before that stunning moment of connection at the coffee shop.

So, yeah, he arranges Jonah’s carved head in the chair right next to Cara’s front door. And adds a candle and lights it, sure, why not.

I thought I did a good job carving before it was all lit up, but seeing it like this, seeing the light shine through his carved-out smile, has blood pumping to my cock.

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So he’s tealight-sexual? That would explain his obsession with scent.

He’s also really not into logic:

Jonah is proof of that, and I don’t feel guilty for ridding the world of one less scumbag.

Dude: if you rid the world of one less scumbag then you have added a scumbag. You’re up one scumbag. You’ve subtracted a negative number.

I can’t remember the last time I felt this anxious about anything, let alone a woman, but my girl is different. She’s not like the others, no.

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I can’t help but wonder if he’s left behind a string of victims who turned out to be not special enough.

We’ve reached chapter ten and the pumpkin patch, and we’re in Cara’s head again. There’s a loud band playing, thank God.

Without being able to hear much other than the music, there isn’t a whole lot of talking that needs to be done, and that makes it easier to consume alcohol at a faster rate.

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Is there a sequel where she goes to rehab?

There’s a corn maze, a bonfire, and a pumpkin patch on the far side of the cornfield, which we’re told has no light so no one is hanging out there. Uh oh.

Cara thinks she spots Jonah, wearing the same costume he had last night, and gets Sloan to stand in front of her to block his view. They discuss getting more drinks, finding new dicks to ride, and how small and inadequate Jonah’s dick was. Then they find a group of people they went to school with and start drunkenly reminiscing.

After a couple of hours of drinking Cara steps away from the group because she needs to pee. The porta potties all have lines a mile long, so she steps into the corn field and walks in a bit to make sure no one can see her. She’s far enough in that the voices from the party have faded away, and then we get a long, detailed description of peeing.

Midway through she hears someone walking closer and yells that she’s peeing, but he keeps moving in her direction, and then she sees him. For a moment she still thinks it’s Jonah, because of the pumpkin mask. But when she stands up, straightens her skirt, and heads toward him (fists clenched), she realizes it’s a taller, more muscular man, and she starts to feel afraid.

The man wearing the pumpkin mask laughs. His laugh is deep, haunting me to my core as he releases it.

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I didn’t realize you could have a haunted core. Sounds uncomfortable.

He tells her to “run, little nightmare,” and that is genuinely terrifying.

We pop back to Rhett’s point of view for the chase, and learn that he’s the one who hired the loud live band to make sure no one would hear her screams. Well, that’s impressively well-organized and crazy.

He loses sight of her at one point, but uses the skills he honed at the CIA and/or Bath and Body Works to find her:

I trail her through row after row of corn, inhaling her vanilla cinnamon scent….

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At least if she survives the night, she can always escape him in the future by carrying a pocketful of scented candles to toss in the opposite direction while she runs away.

Eventually he catches her, holds his fav knife to her throat, and makes her lie down. She refuses to kiss him so he cuts her breast, so she does kiss him, and he grabs her throat when she pulls away. He smells her hair for a while and thinks angrily of Jonah.

He pushes her skirt up to find she’s not wearing panties. There’s some more creepy dialogue, and then they…shuck corn. That is, he shucks a corn cob and makes her suck it, and then he…you know. With the corn cob.

Fucked up or not, there is only one thing my little nightmare needs, and in this moment, she knows I’m the only one who can give it to her.

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I’m pretty sure anyone with access to a produce section can give her this, actually.

I tuck the cob of freshly creamed corn into my packet and head out after her.

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Freshly. Creamed. Corn.

Chapter twelve is Cara’s point of view, and for once instead of repeating what just happened we’re moving forward. She’s angry with herself for wearing heels to a cornfield, and for enjoying that whole thing back there even though it was terrifying. She emerges into the pumpkin patch, which is exactly where she needs not to be.

A small part of me feels like I may have done this on purpose, though, separating myself further from safety. Perhaps I’m feeding into his chase.

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Perhaps you’re extremely drunk and traumatized.

My heart and breathing stop at the same time as I wait, trying to anticipate his next move.

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If your heart and breathing have both stopped, I sincerely hope his next move is to call 911 and attempt resuscitation.

But no, his next move is to tell her about seeing her in the Rustic Roast.

Downwind of him, I catch a whiff of his scent: cedar and citrus.

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Oh good. The anxiety of not knowing his signature scent was killing me.

He gets her on the ground again, ties her up with pumpkin vines, and has sex with her–using his actual penis, for a change. I was seriously expecting him to shove some kind of gourd up there next.

Chapter thirteen brings us back to Rhett, thinking some insanity about how she’s “his” and no one else has ever felt this good and never will.

I knew there was a dark side hidden behind the nice girl facade; I knew I could break her, I had to. And now, she’s broken. Ruined.

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What are you even talking about? What “nice girl facade” would that be? The part where she was dressed as a slutty angel while you watched some other guy pumpkin cream her face, or the part where she went to this shindig with no underwear and a plan to find bigger and better cocks? You’re supposed to be obsessed with her, you dickweed; at least appreciate her for who she is, not some random made-up phrases.

He bites her nipple, and apparently she’s been consuming so many pumpkin spice lattes she’s no longer fully human:

She tastes like the forbidden fruit, sweet like honey with a hit of spice that makes my mouth water.

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He brings out the corn again, and makes her suck on it while he’s still fucking her. She’s apparently enjoying this, or maybe she just likes corn. Who can even tell at this point. The pumpkin vines are also cutting her wrists as this goes on–not, like, fatally or anything, just enough to leave a trail of blood down each arm.

Finally they achieve orgasm again, after what feels like an eternity and a whole lot of vegetables. He makes a pumpkin cream joke and I want to die. Yes, I know I’ve just made similar jokes myself, but I’m writing a recap, not being intimate with someone.

Then he cuts her free and takes her home, thinking about how much she’s going to love the surprise he has waiting for her.

Chapter fourteen, Cara’s POV, and she’s thinking about how much she loved what happened tonight and also how fucked up it was. She’s very conflicted and also very drunk, which is understandable. He brings her home on his motorcycle, and then she sees Jonah’s head.

Rhett asks if she likes it, and abruptly, we’ve reached THE END.

I’ve just remembered I was going to share the dedication, so here it is in all its…something:

For the girls who dream of being chased through a cornfield by a masked man, then fucked in the pumpkin patch when he catches you.

You’re welcome. Also, I know they meant a literal pumpkin patch, but now I have a new favourite euphemism. “He fucked her right in the pumpkin patch.” “He shoved a big lump with knobs in her pumpkin patch, and it had the juice, it had the juice.”