Review: A delightful story; it's going in my re-read pile
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 22, 2012
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.Rating: 9/10PROS:- Cullinan handles Wes's stammer beautifully. She doesn't avoid dialogue entirely, so we get the point that he has difficulty communicating. But a lot of conversations that might be horribly difficult to read are shown as hypothetical conversations in Wes's head, and he has no stammer when he's thinking.- Michael is a bit on the delicate side, both physically and mentally, but this is conveyed without making him seem weak or pathetic. I wanted for him to be protected from the world's cruelty, but I didn't feel as though he was completely helpless or pitifully childlike.- The romance is tentative and slow, which I found to be a wonderful surprise given Michael's profession.- There's a secondary character named Penny who is brash and forward and utterly inappropriate. I loved her, almost from the first word out of her mouth.- The paragraphs that describe plants and greenery and greenhouses and such are very well done. The author obviously did her research not just on plants as we know them today, but also on the sort of plants that would have been common and/or particularly treasured in late nineteenth-century England.CON:- If you have a hard time reading about rape, there are some passages here that will likely be difficult for you. The details in those scenes are not salacious, but I thought the story could certainly have gotten by with less description in this area.Overall comments: The historical setting here gives this a fun spin on the storyline of the hard-hearted prostitute who falls for a john/suitor, and I loved that the man Michael falls for is so utterly uncharming on the outside. I recommend this wholeheartedly for readers who enjoy m/m books with engaging stories and personable characters. There are a few sex scenes, and they're probably middle-of-the-road as far as graphicness goes.