ionR: Soft & Hard Limits

Posted August 29th, 2015 by in Blog, Features, ionR / 19 comments

ionR: Soft & Hard Limits

IonR

 

What are your Soft & Hard Limits? 

 
Soft & Hard limits… Wow, that sounds kind of kinky doesn’t it?
 
HS_LimitRighty ho anyways, I’m here to discuss some things I can semi deal with in the books I read, and the things I refuse to read about in a romance novel.
 

Hard Limits:

 
Cheating.
I can not stand cheating in a story. I actually have a few books in mind, but I won’t name them, that I couldn’t stand because of the cheating in the book. I would have liked the story if that wasn’t in it.

Now, some people are wondering define “cheating” ?

So, my idea of cheating is when the hero or heroine is actually in the relationship for sure dating or together and the other either kisses, messes around or sleeps with someone else. That is cheating to me.

Sometimes, the hero and heroine could have broken up and one of them messed around with someone else, that I don’t actually like, but I could deal with depending on how it is handled in the story.

The main reason I don’t want to deal with cheating is because when I read a story I literally “feel” everything the heroine feels, or at times the hero feels. This happens in pretty much all the good books I read, and I love that. But the downside to that is I don’t want to feel what they are feeling when their partner cheated on them. That is one of the worst feelings ever, and I do not enjoy it. That’s why I hate cheating.
 
Rape Fantasy… I actually didn’t know this existed until a friend of mine told me about it. And that’s just awful to me. One of my biggest fears in life is actually to be raped, and I dang sure don’t want to read about the heroine wanting to be raped because it gets her off… Just no. *Shudders*
 

Soft Limits:

 
BDSM:
I can deal with some BDSM to a certain extent. It just depends on how the hero and heroine handle the situation. I can not, however, deal with it if it goes to the extreme. Like bleeding for instance. That just makes me cringe and not want to read the book.
 
Those are actually the only hard & soft limits I have.
 
I think it’s a good thing to have limits sometimes to what your willing to read. I try to be open minded for the most part, but sometimes that’s just not going to happen if it has one of my limits in it.

 

What are your soft & hard limits? Do you think it’s a good idea to have limits?

 
 

Whitney (@ShootingStarsRe)

 

 

 

 

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19 Responses to “ionR: Soft & Hard Limits”

  1. BSBbabe

    My hard limits is when the hero or heronie has the same names as my children, my parents or my brother. One time the heroine did have the same name as my BFF. That I consider a soft limit.

    I have a hard, hard, hard, hard limit on the whole “step brother/sister” genre that seems to have popped up. I just can’t. In my family, there’s no step/half anything so that’s incest to me.

    I have a soft limit on surprise children/pregnancies in romance. I read romance to escape children (no offense to my wee ones). I also had a surprise pregnancy. It wasn’t romantic at all. 😉

    • ShootingStarsReviews (@ShootingStarsRe)

      I totally get that about the family names! I have that hard time sometimes as well, but I’m able to move past it for the most part.

      I like the stepbrother thing, but only to a certain extent. And the surprise childrenare some of my favs! I’m sad yours wasn’t romantic! That’s a bummer. 😉

  2. bn100

    no cheating or abuse
    no brothers getting together with the same girl at the same time

  3. ndluebke

    I guess I’m just old school, what the heck I’m getting old anyway but there are things that take away the pleasure of reading for me. Abuse, cheating, BDSM which any way you look at it is inflicting pain and 3somes. I’m not real comfortable with a lot of bad language. We don’t talk that way in our home and I find it offensive when there is a lot of it in a story. I either skip over those parts or put the book down.

  4. Maria Rose

    I was recently asked about reviewing a romance book with BDSM elements in it – which would be fine, but it listed ‘electricity’ and ‘water sports’ as part of it. And I was like – ewww, no thank you! That’s my hard limit.

  5. Tammy Y

    Hard limit – physical or mental abuse. Soft limit any hero with my brother’s name.

  6. marcyshuler

    Hard limit: Physical/sexual abuse from the hero towards the heroine. There can be a back story of it as long as it isn’t from the person who I’m supposed to think of as the hero.

  7. Loverofromance

    I struggle with bdsm elements…the only time I can really read it is if its light bdsm elements…I don’t like it when it’s more extreme and intense. I do have a hard time with menage or having a mean spirited hero or heroine.

  8. Terri C

    Don’t like really kinky stuff or anything that hurts ANYBODY. Also frequent F-bombs will make me grimace and make it hard to get through it.

  10. Amy Rickman

    I don’t set hard limits because something that doesn’t work for me in one book may work in a different story. Example I’m not a fan of cheating but in Madeline Sheehan’s Undeniable series even though I’m not a fan it works with and is part of the story.