Exodus

“You may hate my father, but right now you’re acting just like him, like a machine. A control-freak void of humanity with a God complex.”

In her initial confrontation with the man she knows only as “The Frenchman,” Cecelia uses a simile to equate him with her estranged father, Roman. This bitter comparison characterizes her personal battle against the cold, calculating authority figures in her life. The specific use of phrases such as “control-freak” and “God complex” draws attention to Tobias’s emotional detachment and desire for absolute control over their often-hostile interactions.

“A kiss that breathes life back into me, a life that’s withered to nothingness during months of neglect and isolation. Beneath him, my treacherous body betrays me with the undeniable shift in intensity, the hunger starting low, unfurling through my limbs.”

As Cecelia endures a violent, nonconsensual kiss from Tobias, the narrative employs an intensely problematic yet common trope of the dark romance genre by suggesting that her instinctive physical reaction to his touch is an implicit form of consent—even though he has clearly forced himself upon her. This description reinscribes the misogynistic trends inherent in the genre—particularly the ones that frame women’s refusal of men’s unwanted sexual advances as a “maybe” or a “yes.” Throughout the protagonists’ many violent encounters, the issue of consent is treated as a mere suggestion. Tobias’s habit of forcing himself past Cecelia’s boundaries promotes the false and deeply damaging idea that women who deny men’s sexual advances secretly crave them. Additionally, the novel’s deliberate