Will Darling Adventures by KJ Charles
Dec. 12th, 2023 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsSlippery Creatures, The Sugared Game, Subtle Blood
4/5. Trilogy of 1920’s queer romances in which a soldier come home from the trenches has his quiet life of bookshop ownership disturbed by a plot involving national security, which brings him into the orbit of a high-strung socialist (or is he?) aristocrat.
These had an uphill climb with me. I picked them up because I really wanted to be reading Freya Marske’s latest, but my library hold wasn’t in yet so this was the next closest queer historical (very different otherwise, obviously). So I was disgruntled about that, and then I was put off by the second hero, who is the self-hating type who tries to make sure that he makes everyone hate him as much as he hates himself, oh but it’s all entirely necessary self-sabotage, don’t you know. Blech.
But this is KJ Charles, so wouldn’t you know that by the second book, I was all in on this relationship. It is hard work for both of them, which is one of my favorite things. And they both change in painful, believable ways. And she made a very good choice not alternating POVs here – watching the other hero slowly change his life from the outside is beautiful, having to hear all his crap from the inside would have been intolerable.
Good, chewy, sexy, spyful.
Content notes: Past self-harm, familial abuse, violence.
4/5. Trilogy of 1920’s queer romances in which a soldier come home from the trenches has his quiet life of bookshop ownership disturbed by a plot involving national security, which brings him into the orbit of a high-strung socialist (or is he?) aristocrat.
These had an uphill climb with me. I picked them up because I really wanted to be reading Freya Marske’s latest, but my library hold wasn’t in yet so this was the next closest queer historical (very different otherwise, obviously). So I was disgruntled about that, and then I was put off by the second hero, who is the self-hating type who tries to make sure that he makes everyone hate him as much as he hates himself, oh but it’s all entirely necessary self-sabotage, don’t you know. Blech.
But this is KJ Charles, so wouldn’t you know that by the second book, I was all in on this relationship. It is hard work for both of them, which is one of my favorite things. And they both change in painful, believable ways. And she made a very good choice not alternating POVs here – watching the other hero slowly change his life from the outside is beautiful, having to hear all his crap from the inside would have been intolerable.
Good, chewy, sexy, spyful.
Content notes: Past self-harm, familial abuse, violence.