51 pages • 1-hour read
Kiss the Villain
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Themes
The Cost of Social Masking
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, child abuse, sexual violence, rape, and death.
One of the underlying tensions in Kent’s narrative is Gareth’s intentional self-erasure behind an unblemished persona. Initially, the author portrays this social masking of his personality as a point of pride for Gareth, one that feeds into his sense of superiority over others: “They know me as Gareth ‘The Fixer’ […]. Golden boy Gareth with the highest GPA […]. Gareth, who possesses the cleanest reputation and a future lined with open doors. No one suspects that when they think I’m […] studying, I’m actually here, roaming behind enemy lines with the Serpents” (14). However, over the course of the novel, Gareth’s understanding of both his motives and the effects of his deception shifts. Kent explores the costs of social masking through Gareth’s journey to understanding the drawbacks of hiding himself from everyone.
As the novel opens, Kent highlights how emotional distancing has become a point of disproportionate pride for Gareth. Gareth adamantly rationalizes this persona by claiming that he adopts it so that he will be underestimated both by his enemies and his loved ones. However, because of it, he socially excludes himself and impedes his social development. He adopts a general condescension of his peers, remarking, “As soon as I walk into the lecture hall, I’m once again surrounded by my classmates, as if they’re bees and I’m […] honey” (41). Gareth’s tone reveals his perspective on other students: They are mere insects (“bees”) compared to his alleged superiority. Gareth’s arrogance, bolstered by his straight-A transcript, becomes another obstacle to a true connection with others. He only ever interacts with fellow students under the guise of his golden boy persona and thus never genuinely engages with his peers beyond fulfilling the social optics of his persona.
Throughout the narrative, however, Kent underlines how costly such an elaborately tailored public persona becomes, specifically as it concerns Gareth’s interpersonal relationships. With the exception of his grandfather, no one in his family openly recognizes Gareth’s true personality, which Kayden will later claim bears the hallmarks of antisocial personality disorder. Even though he is able to be open with his grandfather, he is still warned to leash his natural tendencies and quell all emotional attachment; as his grandfather warns him while helping to cover up Harper’s father’s death, “You need to rein it in, son. Don’t get attached to the point of obsessing and then fixate about killing. I think that’s your trigger, so avoid getting too attached at all costs” (283). Because of comments like these, Gareth believes that he cannot be his true self, even with the people who love him the most. Gareth’s social masking, the result of a perceived need to isolate himself, only heightens his maladaptive views on social relationships. With his example, Kent examines the costs of hiding one’s authentic self, illustrating how such social masking can spiral into further isolation and lack of connection.
The Relief of Establishing Power Dynamics
In Kiss the Villain, Kent establishes multiple skewed power dynamics between her two main characters, Gareth and Kayden. Gareth is 11 years younger than Kayden and is also his student. In addition, because of Kayden’s revenge plot against Gareth’s grandfather, he already knows more about Gareth and his family than Gareth understands. While all of these power dynamics serve as valid reasons for opposition to their relationship, the author also includes a fourth power dynamic within their romance: BDSM-coded sexual behavior. This is a complicating factor in their relationship, but through it, Kent explores how their dominant-submissive dynamic helps Gareth to both release his anxiety and self-esteem issues and accept his love for Kayden.
Though initially forcefully imposed and never properly negotiated, the dominant-submissive tone of Gareth and Kayden’s relationship permits Gareth a freedom and peace he has seldom experienced before. Kent deliberately juxtaposes Gareth’s meticulously curated socially acceptable life, in which he constantly worries about his true self being discovered, with his relationship with Kayden. Kayden’s imposed dominant-submissive structure on their relationship provides a space where Gareth can relinquish his steadfast control over himself to Kayden—a space Gareth sometimes refers to as the “white room.” This abdication of control and the implied trust within it is a novelty for Gareth, who has never been able to believe that his authentic self would find acceptance. Kent exposes the psychological and euphoric release that Gareth finds in this power dynamic in his reflection, “I crave how he dominates me, that I can give up control to him and he’ll set my world ablaze. […] In a way, I just like…letting go when I’m with him. I don’t have to worry about anything, because he’ll make everything right” (226). Not only does this relationship structure offer Gareth a respite from his steadfast control of his life, but it also offers Gareth someone whom he can trust with his true self.
As their relationship develops, however, Kent illustrates that this trust and release are hard-earned. At first, Kayden forcefully imposes the structure to break through not only Gareth’s sexuality denial but his fear of losing his control. She showcases this anxiety namely in the scene where Gareth decides to have penetrative sex, but with one telling condition; he tells Kayden, “I won’t let you do it willingly. […] I can’t. […] Tie me up. […] Make me feel as if you’re forcing me and I have no option but to take it’” (172). Such is Gareth’s excruciating need to feel in control that the only way to allow himself what he wants is to impose a temporary illusion of powerlessness, even though he knows that he ultimately has the power to reject the activity. As his sexual desires war with his embedded need for control, Kent showcases how only the confines of a dominant-submissive-coded relationship allow him the excuse he needs to fulfill the former without negating the latter. With Gareth’s evolving understanding of himself and his relationship with Kayden, Kent explores the nuance and complexity of a dominant-submissive relationship, highlighting how it can offer participants newfound freedom and acceptance.
The Lasting Effects of Past Trauma
Though both Cassandra, Kayden’s past wife, and Harper, Gareth’s past girlfriend, are peripheral characters that never have a direct presence within the narrative, Kent uses these women’s deaths as a way to demonstrate how trauma becomes both Kayden's and Gareth’s guiding principle. Through these parallel backstories, Kent explores the haunting effect of guilt in both men’s lives, and by creating two women whose histories and relationships align so closely, she also examines the different ways their similar traumas manifest in the actions of the two men.
Early on, Kent establishes the striking parallels between Cassandra and Harper. By all accounts, they both bore the title of romantic partner in theory only: Though Cassandra and Kayden were married, they soon realized they were sexually incompatible, and their relationship shifted to a deep and intimate friendship. Gareth and Harper originally became close because in her, Gareth recognized a similar loneliness to his own. As he states, “She [Harper] had a façade like me [Gareth] and I saw through it” (280). Much like Kayden found a partner-in-crime in Cassandra, Gareth found familiarity with Harper in her attempts to hide the horrors of the life she led after her mother’s death. These personal histories highlight how the women became inextricable and important parts of the men’s lives, foreshadowing Kayden and Gareth’s respective traumas after Cassandra and Harper’s deaths.
Cassandra and Harper’s deaths are also framed similarly: Both are tied to sexual abuse, with their abusers left unscathed until Kayden and Gareth individually dispense personal justice. The author deliberately mirrors these women’s journeys and the respective impacts they had on Kayden and Gareth to highlight how both men are struggling with the same trauma; their deaths stunt Kayden and Gareth’s social development, which Kent illustrates by the unrelenting reminders of their failures to protect them. In Kayden’s case, this haunting guilt manifests in nightmares where Cassandra appears to seek revenge: “Have you forgotten me?” Cassandra asks in his dream before killing Gareth (187), bringing Kayden’s present happiness with Gareth into conflict with his guilt over the past. Here, Kent highlights how Kayden fundamentally ties his own happiness with Cassandra—because she was murdered, he is unable to achieve true happiness until she is avenged. Any joy outside of this mandate betrays her memory, which consequently isolates Kayden. Gareth is similarly constrained and isolated after killing Harper’s father, as his grandfather unilaterally forbids him from having any more “obsessions,” isolating him from any social attachment, romantic or otherwise. Kent highlights the parallels between the women’s stories and their continuing effects on the men’s lives to explore the lasting effects of trauma on present happiness. In effect, the memory of these women and the trauma associated with their deaths become shackles on both men, as they struggle to exist as their true selves while honoring the pledges they’ve made in the wake of their passing.
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