Comfort Food

A woman travels to a conference to give a motivational speech for women. By the end of an ordinary Tuesday she has woken bound to a chair in a cold, empty cell. She narrates what follows in the first person.

Her captor never speaks to her. He controls her through other means: food and comfort when she obeys, punishment when she displeases him. Under that regime she is being reduced to something that lives only to follow his whims.

She sees him as a beautiful monster, yet she is changing too, into something not quite human. Her one hope is small and strange: that some day he will say anything at all to her.

This is a dark romance of captivity, with a power imbalance at its centre and a tone that is bleak and psychologically intense. It was published in March 2010 and is regarded as the original dark romance. Readers should expect coercion and punishment on the page, with no lightness to offset it.