Still Beating: A Dark Survival Romance

So wrong, yet so right! Check your trigger warnings. I’m still tearing up over this one. 😭

Here is my ❤️. She 💔 it. Then ❤️‍🩹 it. This is NOT for the faint of heart. It is rough, raw, and beautiful.

Definitely a darker story but one of my favorite books. There are some triggers

Jennifer Hartmann can write. That honestly made Still Beating more frustrating because the prose keeps pulling you deeper into a relationship that feels built entirely from trauma, coercion, and untreated psychological damage. I spent most of the audiobook horrified while also unable to stop listening because I needed to know how much worse it could possibly get. Cora and Dean have hated each other for years. Dean is engaged to Cora’s sister Mandy. Then a serial killer kidnaps them both and subjects them to weeks of torture, starvation, sexual violence, and psychological abuse. The story positions their growing attachment as dark fate and soul-deep connection. I kept reading it as two deeply traumatized people bonding through survival. They desperately needed intensive therapy instead of being left to their own devices after their traumatic experiences. The biggest issue for me was how the story romanticizes trauma responses that felt devastating rather than swoony. Dean literally admits his relationship with Mandy lacked depth because they had never been to Hell and back together. Sir, experiencing trauma with Cora is not a reason to string Mandy along while you go after her sister. Hartmann constantly frames Cora and Dean's suffering as falling in love. I found it hard to root for their relationship no matter how poetic the writing became. Nobody in this book behaves like people who just escaped a serial killer. The lack of mandatory therapy, victim advocacy, police investigation, or meaningful psychological intervention made the entire aftermath feel detached from reality. These characters are dropped back into normal life carrying catastrophic trauma with almost no professional support. Mandy also drove me insane. Her demanding that Dean immediately return to normal intimacy after surviving abduction and torture felt manipulative and cruel. The forced sexual encounters were also incredibly difficult to process. Earl forcing Dean to assault Cora at gunpoint is horrifying enough. The book then shifts into moments where their bodies begin responding physically during the abuse. I understand this can happen psychologically and biologically during assault. Hartmann clearly wanted to explore the confusion and shame surrounding that reality. The problem is the narrative starts treating those moments as romantic awakening instead of the deeply disturbing survival response they are. I kept wanting the book to interrogate that dynamic more critically instead of folding it into the love story. Cora and Dean themselves never won me over either. Cora spends much of the novel being abrasive and exhausting. Dean supposedly has this dangerous bad-boy reputation that never really materializes on page. Their chemistry outside captivity felt thin to me which made the sudden soulmate-level devotion harder to buy once they reconnected. The audiobook narration did not help. If you are going to hire dual narrators please let them perform their own characters throughout the book. Laurie West’s male voice and Christian Black’s female voice constantly sounded unnatural. It turned emotional moments into accidental comedy more than once. I do understand why Still Beating works for some readers. Hartmann writes emotionally intense scenes well and commits completely to the darkness of the material. Readers who enjoy extremely toxic trauma-heavy dark romance with messy emotional devastation will probably eat this up. I just never bought the relationship as healthy, romantic, or aspirational. Every chapter felt like watching untreated PTSD masquerading as epic love.

This was a good one I couldn’t put it down! A must read!