Zwivhuya Chuma, $1.01, ISBN 978-1005252243
Contemporary Romance, 2022

I know I’m going to have some issues with the technical aspects of Zwivhuya Chuma’s My Generous Bully during the prologue itself.

Twenty years ago

Mainger Primary School First Grade

Bethany

I would never ever forget my first day of school. Happy to be done with baby classes I was ready for big school, ready to meet new faces and make new friends, this was an adventure I had been looking forward to since I was five and now the time has officially come. I was dressed in the grey school skirt with the plaid shirt that was our uniform, white ankle high socks and black buckle shoes, mommy worked extra hard to make sure my pigtails looked super cute and I was ready for the day .

It is supposed to take place 20 years prior, but the prologue is clearly narrated from the adult Bethany’s point of view. In other words, this one may be framed as a flashback, but it’s not. It’s a grown-up Bethany reminiscing about the past.

Ah, just small things, you may say, and in a way, I agree with that. However, when I read so many things, such a glaring issue stands out like a sore thumb. It’s not helping when it comes to me forming a good first impression.

Ashton bullied Bethany, and I do mean “bullied” in every sense of the word, when they were kids and she was fat.

Lily knew about Ashton, the day I came home from my head hitting the ground when he threw his bag at me she was home with the nanny and saw my bruises.

Well, the adult Bethany is back in town for her mother’s funeral, and lo and behold, Ashton is here to pick up the pieces of her heart.

Hey, it makes sense. She’s obviously not in a good place in her head during her mother’s funeral, which will explain why she’d go for her childhood bully.

Indeed, this story screams “Tell me you have never been bullied as a kid, without telling me you have never been bullied as a kid.”

While I hadn’t received such a severe bullying as Bethany when I was a kid, I had met my share of them, and here’s the funny thing about emotions that crystallized when one was a kid: it’s damned hard to dislodge them even when one is an adult and supposedly sensible.

I still have a visceral repulsion to people that were horrid to me during my childhood and teenage years. One of them grew up to be a tall, handsome man with the loveliest dark brown skin and brown eyes ever, and he told me he thought I was cute when we bumped into one another during one of those “let’s go back to the old school for charity purposes” events. I didn’t swoon. I wanted to run screaming out of the room, because the younger me immediately recoiled and suspected that something humiliating was bound to follow. It’s visceral, irrational, but it’s all there.

Hence, for this story to work, Ashton needs to do a lot of work to earn Bethany’s trust again. It is one thing to say that they are now older and should be able to put the past behind, but like I’ve said, childhood trauma is rarely overcome by logic and sense.

Unfortunately, the author has Ashton charging in like an alpha male, saying that Bethany needs him to protect her from her grief and the cruel world outside. I suppose he isn’t that part of the cruel world, of course. It doesn’t help that Bethany is an emotional wreck that can’t seem to tell up from down most of the time.

These two have a romance, therefore, that resembles a train that is hovering dangerously over a precipice. Any minute now, everything will come crashing down…

“Answer me dammit…” I growled

She sighed and finally looked at me, her brown eyes piercing my blue ones

“Look tell me what you want to hear so that I can say it and this interaction can be over, I just healed I am not ready to take one of your pranks or accidental pushes. Now tell me how I can end this interaction as quickly as possible”

The punctuation, the sentence structure… oh my. The heroine telling the hero that she is not ready to be hurt by him again really makes my loins ache with romantic throbs of yearning, though!

Her eyes widened, as I moved in and slowly pressed my lips against hers. I hated it when she looked at me like I had just lost my mind but for now I would take it. My message had sinked in, I would have to find another way to protect her; pushing her down the stairs, and hurting her might have been a little extreme on my part. I moved back gave her one last look before I walked away, leaving her there speechless.

Sure, Eminem’s Love the Way You Lie is actually a work of art in many ways, but it is not meant to be a romantic anthem. That one works because it’s about a very destructive relationship involving two damaged, crazy people.

This one, though? It needs to be treated differently. I like that the author doesn’t hide or sugarcoat how brutal Ashton can be even in the present day, but Bethany can’t completely fear him only to miraculously love him in the next heartbeat. For this romance to work without Ashton having to change his ways, she needs to love, want, crave his treatment of her.

As Rihanna would go in the chorus of Love the Way You Lie:

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn?
Well, that’s all right because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry?
Well, that’s all right because I love the way you lie

See? “I like the way it hurts. I love the way you lie.” That explains why she is willing to go down in flames with her abusive boyfriend. That relationship isn’t healthy, yes, but it makes sense given the nature of the people in it.

This one, though, it makes no sense because Bethany’s reactions to Ashton indicate that she is more like Shelley Duvall screaming in terror while clutching a knife in her trembling hands, as Ashton breaks down the door with an ax and leers at her: “Here’s Johnny!”

At any rate, I don’t buy this one one bit, so it’s a nope from me. The fact that the narrative is so unpolished and even unpleasant to read only adds to the nope, nope, nope.

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