Review: Well written and sweet
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 2, 2010
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.Rating: 8/10PROS:- Ian and Nicky's past together is revealed in just enough detail early on that it made me instantly curious to read more about them.- I love the fact that Ian is not physically perfect. The author examines his thoughts and feelings (both mental and physical) pertaining to his amputated arm in a good amount of detail. His musings about it are pervasive, but I didn't find them annoying; they're reflective and a little sad, but he's not overly despairing or dramatic about it.- I also liked that Nicky is just the slightest bit on the standoffish side when it comes to Ian, yet he's also the aggressor in their relationship.- I've read quite a few Regency romances over the years, both m/f and m/m, but the characters in this story participate in some holiday festivities and games that I'd never read about before and that give the story a fun, unique feel.- The ending of the novella contains an unusual plot twist that I liked a lot. (I don't want to say more because I'm afraid I'll give something away.)CONS:- Mitchell uses occasional foreign phrases throughout the story, and I must admit to my ignorance of the meaning of some of them, which made certain sentences basically incomprehensible to me. For example: "As injurious as this fortnight was to Ian's mens sana, it was a boon to his corpore sano."- There are a couple (but only a couple) conversations that contained fewer speech tags ("he said") than I wanted; that is, I was confused for a short time as to who was speaking, what the characters' relationship was, who the people being referred to were, etc. The first of these conversations is at the very beginning of the story.Overall comments: My one main complaint about this story is that it's short; that's not to say that it's TOO short, though. I just didn't want it to end. I loved the treatment of Ian's disability, especially how gentle and reassuring Nicky is without emasculating Ian at all. The sex isn't terribly graphic, but there's a decent amount of it.