REVIEW: Still Beating by Jennifer Hartmann

Still Beating by Jennifer Hartmann: Having had her wallet stolen the night of her sister Mandy’s birthday party, Cora tries every possible contact, and even some she doesn’t really know desperate to grab a lift home. Eventually, she contacts Dean, Mandy’s long term boyfriend and life long nemesis; the type of hate hate relationship that develops early on and ends up being an all-out battle of the fittest.

Relenting, Dean collects her, not before discovering she is being hit on by a shady character and before long, both Dean and Cora are being attacked in the middle of the road under a false police pull-over pretence. Awaking beaten and chained in an underground basement, Dean and Cora realise that they are going to need to rely on more than their casual fighting if they are going to make it out alive.

With an appropriate trigger warning regarding sexual assault, kidnapping and suicidal ideation, Still Beating is the foundational book in a semi-series that pulls no punches with respect to the dark romance genre. And whilst it is clear there is more going on between the cat-fighting façade of Dean and Cora, the horrific circumstance invariably brings them together as survivors, friends and confidants despite the fact that Dean was forced to rape Cora at gunpoint and invariably murders their kidnapper with his bare hands.

Once out, their worlds naturally implode as each need to learn how to live again with the continual nightmares of what occurred beneath the earth for those 21 days. Whilst at times a little clumsy and repetitive, the complexity of Dean and Cora’s relationship was engaging to navigate through and although it is evident most of their responses are coming from a space of significant trauma it felt essential to not expect any level of true realism in terms of their relationship development – which was actually passionate and grounded in deep history.

On the whole, this was certainly not a light read, but there was just enough intense dark love to keep the pages turning. And despite the characters needing a bit of work, there was a happy ever after that was thoroughly well earned.

Book Info:

Publication: 11 July 2023 | Bloom Books |

When Cora Lawson attends her sister’s birthday party, she expects at most a hangover or a walk of shame by the end of it. She doesn’t anticipate a stolen wallet, leaving her stranded and dependent on her sister’s fiancé, Dean Asher―her archnemesis and perpetual thorn in her side.

And she really doesn’t anticipate getting knocked out and waking up chained in a madman’s basement, Dean in his own shackles beside her.

After fifteen years of teasing, insults, and never-ending pranks, the ultimate joke seems to be on them. The two people who always thought they’d end up killing each other must now work together if they want to survive long enough to escape.

But Cora and Dean don’t know that their abductor has a plan for them. A plan that will alter the course of their relationship, blur the line between hate and love, and shackle them to each other long after they are freed from their chains. They’re in this together―no matter what their unexpected bond might cost them.