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katara
Heartless Heathens by Santana Knox
Series:
N/A
Genre:
Erotica, Smut, Retellings, Fantasy, Why Choose, Reverse Harem, Dystopia, BookTok, Standalone, The Hunch Back of Notre Dame Retelling, Adult, Gothic, Horror, Novella, Standalone, Fractured Fairytale, Reimaging, Loosely Based, Victor Hugo, Dark
Publication Date:
December 26, 2022
Pages Numbers:
406
Read Date:
September 28th, 2023
Date Finished:
September 29th, 2023
Rating:
3.8/5
Blurb:
Hey,
Over here.
No, look up.
Yeah, I’m the one they talk about. The headmaster’s prized possession, locked away in the bell tower of NotreDame Parochial College. To most of the students I was just a myth.
An urban legend.
The girl who rings the bells up in the tower, the one who talks to gargoyles.
Frollo’s secret
Then they showed up, those heartless heathens. Outcasts, just like me. But these men aren’t just dangerous, they’re heartless. They won’t abide or bend to the rules of this deranged school and the secrets it keeps from the world.
But now that they’ve found me, they may never let me go.
And maybe I wouldn’t want them to…
Heartless Heathens : Sanctuary
Is a Why Choose Gothic Romance in an academy setting loosely inspired from major points of Victor Hugo’s Notredame De Paris. This is NOT a retelling, it is NOT a fractured fairy tale or a reimagining. All characters are adults.
Review:
This book was billed as a "reimaging of The Hunchback of Notre Dame de Paris". A dystopian world where the United States government has collapsed allowing the rise of Christianity to take its place in the ashes. Other religions have been wiped off the map. If you were not among the wealthy, you had to find ways to gain access to the prestigious schools that belonged to Christianity.
For Romani, all she has known is the bell tower. For most of her life, she had been raised by Claude Follo and made to remain hidden because Frollo had her believing that there were monsters out there wanting to eat her. Because of this, she has been labeled the ghost of the tower.
But it changes when three boys - Corvin, Felix, and Sonny - take over the abandoned church. Her food supply from Frollo has been cut off and the only way to get anything would be to go down. There she finds that the abandoned church has been turned into a home painted black and seemingly having altars.
She is caught one day and finds herself at the mercy of three boys. All of whom are actually looking for something that was supposedly important for Arlan Black. Could it be she?
I am having a really hard time trying to decide where I plan to rate this book. While on the one hand, the idea of mixing A Handmaid's Tale with a reimagining of The Hunchback of Notre Dame made it sound interesting. The idea that this dystopian world lies in the hands of the Christian Church made it sound frightening. The world's religions no longer exist forcing those to become part of the church. All of this is due to the ending of Roe v Wade and the breakdown of the government.
Romina is an innocent girl. Never knowing how the world outside of the bell tower works. She lacks understanding and maturity even when the boys decide that she will be their pet, their little lamb, etc. They never really bother to teach her anything other than sex, something else that she is not able to understand nor really allow her a decision on the matter. They do give her a safeword but it is never used. Though she may have enjoyed the experiences, you find it morally reprehensible due to the power dynamics and potential exploitation involved.
This story is meant to be a reimaging of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and you can see much of it sprinkled throughout the pages. The bell tower. Frollo's obsession with Romina. And Frollo uses the church to carry out his deeds.
But where do I place this? I love the dark romance when it comes to stories like this. The smut is abundant and consent is not always going to be present when it comes to books such as these. While I enjoyed this novel, I just could not find to like the boys that much. I know they are dark with no morally grey within their souls.
While I did enjoy the story, the smut, and some of the world-building, I found that the information dump at the beginning pretty much did not offer a far more grandeur look at this dystopian world. The character growth seemed to stall due to this and I could not find a real connection between Romina and the boys.
Final Thought:
Honestly, I hope I made sense with this review because I wrote it when I had a massive migraine. I will say that if you enjoy dark romance and dub/con storylines, then this will be the book for you.
Similar Books:
That Sik Luv by Jescie Hall
Court of Nightmares by K.A. Knight
Death's Obsession by Avina St. Graves
