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This book does one of my least favorite things and creates conflict by having one character knowingly lie to another character, and then continue the lie for an extended period while understanding that doing so is only making the situation worse. I’m not opposed to dishonest characters, it’s just that it’s far more interesting to me when characters are deceiving themselves as well. Otherwise I end up rolling my eyes and thinking “come the fuck on my dude” and it makes it hard to root for them, and I don’t read romance novels to /not root for the characters/.

The world building in this is great and generally was far more interesting to me than the angsty back and forth trust issues of the central romance. Rusty in particular felt a bit empty on the page; his sister seems to exist just to float in and out of his life to give advice, and his very strained relationship with his parents isn’t used at all to reveal anything else about his character or how how handles relationships, which felt like a missed opportunity. Niles, for all that he became a bit tedious after a while, was understandable, and all the sections with his job and his dad helped him feel like an entire person.

I will probably read the sequel at some point because I assume it’s about Niles’ best friend, and who doesn’t want to read a book about a gay dance instructor on a cruise ship who sends his bestie sex toys as presents? (Goals, tbh)

This is a good modern historical romance (ie: set in the past but the people behave generally like people and have relatable motives, and the world isn’t mysteriously bereft of queerness or something just because it’s the 1800s) that has some fun twists. I especially enjoyed that the woman takes one look at the guy and is basically like, “oh no, he’s too hot” and has to spend the rest of the book persuading him into bed, essentially. (A nice reversal from the usual blushing virgin routine.)

I found the eventual final conflict and resolution to be pretty rushed, but that’s a romance novel for you. The sex is all well written while being surprisingly generalized — there are a lot of scenes of teasing or extended foreplay through objects — which again, is a nice change up and is interesting to see an author do instead of Yet More Ways to Describe a Penis or what have you.