Review: Regency romance with detailed sex scenes and an interesting plot
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 22, 2010
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.Rating: 8/10PROS:- The plot is intriguing. It took me a while to figure out what was going on at the beginning of the story, and once the story gets going, it's got a nice amount of (non-life-threatening) intrigue to it.- Oliver's circumstances are well portrayed. The author gets across not only how little he has--for a gentleman, anyway--but also how desperately he wants Vincent.- March also does a good job of showing Vincent's struggles against his desire for men as well as his yearning for his father's respect. The author also manages (in a fairly short story) to portray Vincent's possessiveness rather convincingly.- The sex scenes are pretty hot, and there's a BDSM element to them, which I didn't expect. I had no idea there were sex toys back then, but the characters sure use a lot of them.CONS:- If there's one thing I think could have been a little better developed, it's the two men's friendship (and as an extension of this, their background). I understand their sexual attraction, but the emotional connection they have was a little hard for me to buy into, given the social distance between them.- At times, I really disliked Vincent. He's arrogant and selfish, although I do understand that in a way, he can't help it. He's a product of his economic and social surroundings.- There are instances in which some sentences are hard to understand because the author uses "he" without telling us which character the pronoun refers to. Here's one example in which the second "he" ought to be "Oliver": "Vincent excelled at everything he did whereas he always fell short." There are also times when the wrong word is used in a sentence: "...and allow Marsden's to racket [ratchet] even higher."Overall comments: This is Regency romance without the typical tendency to hold back during sex scenes. There aren't a surplus of those scenes, but March definitely doesn't shy away from details during them. I really liked the way the characters ended up together; it's an unusual take on the typical Regency situation.