Wanted, A Gentleman by KJ Charles

Wanted, A Gentleman

3/5. M/M historical novella about a matrimonial ad publisher (google it, it's interesting) accidentally teaming up with a former slave to retrieve an erring daughter of a wealthy house on a flight north to be married.

I was looking for something light and madcap, which the jacket copy suggested this would be. It's not particularly either of those things. It's not heavy, either, but there is a vein of bitterness and seething resentment running through this story. Our heroes find commonality in the experience of being told they should be grateful that their poor treatment was not worse, and how they both know, down in their guts, how wrong that is. That's not the most comfortable reading material, particularly in the case of the former slave.

So file under interesting story doing things that I wasn't looking for at the time.

Cards on the Table by Josh Lanyon

Cards on the Table

3/5. Another M/M novella. This one paint-by-numbers Lanyon about a reporter recovering from an accident and investigating a fifty-year-old Hollywood murder, and his hard-bitten cop neighbor. Quite dull, but elevated by being precisely the sort of dull I was looking for. And also by amusing me through recent anachronisms that feel ancient: the main character here has Netflix . . . which he gets by mail.