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chocolatepotI just about ate this book up! Lovely m/m romance set in 1885 (with flashbacks).
David Forester is the proprietor of the Curious Fox, a molly house, where he tries to do the best that he can for the club's patrons. His friend, Noah Clarke, is a high-end tailor who often dresses in drag at the Fox. The two met at boarding school when David defended Noah from a bully, and the two explored their sexualities together in adolescence. Then Noah went to Italy in order to learn his trade, while David tried to manage his family's failing fortunes (shitty dad who pisses away the money syndrome); David's father burned down their hotel and died in the fire, causing a massive scandal that saw the family scattered to the winds and David left to fend for himself in London. For a while, he was the plaything of Lord Belleville, a wicked aristocrat who eventually let him take over the Fox once they were no longer having an affair.
When the book picks up, Belleville is making noises about closing the Fox, which would leave its queer clientele with much less secure places to hang out and have sex and would leave David with no employment. Eventually, he intimates that he might be able to change his mind if David comes to the country with him and brings a fake wife for respectability. Noah persuades David to take his (Noah's) sister, but turns up at the train station in drag himself, and David finally decides to leave Belleville for good and make a new life for himself - which is good timing, because it turns out that Belleville was under investigation by the police. Happily Ever After in which David and Noah get each other and the Fox, and Noah also starts his own, more interesting, tailoring practice catering to the lesbian crowd.
In no particular order.
David and Noah get together and admit that they've been in love with each other for years at the midpoint, which was super interesting because I was expecting the traditional romance novel structure where that *is* the climax of the book. I was worried that it would then be followed with a dumb misunderstanding because romance leads aren't allowed to actually be happily together that early, but it was not! They just dealt with their issues. This is one of the things that made me think the book might have been better served to be published as historical fiction rather than romance, but I feel like the romance categories have kind of bloomed out and eaten the category of general/historical fiction that has romance and isn't super-serious or literary? I guess this is an effect of romance being the only branch of trad publishing that is actually turning profits these days.
Something I didn't get into in the synopsis above is that Noah's family are the kind of people who would normally be shown to be right about everything in historical fiction: Unitarians, the father is a doctor who accepts Noah being a tailor, the sister is a dress reformer who's become a doctor herself. And they both accept that Noah's gay, but at the same time ... they don't quite. They want him to be a staid, academically gay guy who writes columns about how pure his love his for a similarly staid partner. They don't quite like that he's flamboyant and goes to the Fox, and they don't like Noah's attachment to David, who's now quite disreputable and who they think pulled Noah into this kind of life. There's an excellent scene where Noah tells them both off for it, and I LOVED it. It was a level of nuance I don't expect from historical fiction in general, and historical romance particularly.
The dark stuff also seemed to be handled with a really nice touch, because there's some HEAVY stuff here that Everlee doesn't delve into but also doesn't seem to be avoiding - it's just that less is more. David's father was abusive and you can see how it's affected David, but we never see him on the page, let alone actively hurting David. Belleville clearly took advantage of David at a bad time, and that comes through, but David doesn't really perceive it that way. We hardly see Belleville at all, but his menace comes through in the few scenes where he's present and in David's actions when he's not. It's so clear that David was fucked up by his family and that it's helped him get into this mess. One of the things that made me sit up and take notice most was when Noah came back from Italy to find David working as a waiter in a rougher gay bar - and there's also another scene where David kind of sums up what happened and doesn't even realize that he's stabbing Noah in the feels by implying that if Noah had only stayed with him or invited him more directly to come, things could have been fine. It all adds up to my wanting fic of this book, which is not something I often feel about romance novels. And to a recommendation of this if you like hurt/comfort.
David Forester is the proprietor of the Curious Fox, a molly house, where he tries to do the best that he can for the club's patrons. His friend, Noah Clarke, is a high-end tailor who often dresses in drag at the Fox. The two met at boarding school when David defended Noah from a bully, and the two explored their sexualities together in adolescence. Then Noah went to Italy in order to learn his trade, while David tried to manage his family's failing fortunes (shitty dad who pisses away the money syndrome); David's father burned down their hotel and died in the fire, causing a massive scandal that saw the family scattered to the winds and David left to fend for himself in London. For a while, he was the plaything of Lord Belleville, a wicked aristocrat who eventually let him take over the Fox once they were no longer having an affair.
When the book picks up, Belleville is making noises about closing the Fox, which would leave its queer clientele with much less secure places to hang out and have sex and would leave David with no employment. Eventually, he intimates that he might be able to change his mind if David comes to the country with him and brings a fake wife for respectability. Noah persuades David to take his (Noah's) sister, but turns up at the train station in drag himself, and David finally decides to leave Belleville for good and make a new life for himself - which is good timing, because it turns out that Belleville was under investigation by the police. Happily Ever After in which David and Noah get each other and the Fox, and Noah also starts his own, more interesting, tailoring practice catering to the lesbian crowd.
In no particular order.
David and Noah get together and admit that they've been in love with each other for years at the midpoint, which was super interesting because I was expecting the traditional romance novel structure where that *is* the climax of the book. I was worried that it would then be followed with a dumb misunderstanding because romance leads aren't allowed to actually be happily together that early, but it was not! They just dealt with their issues. This is one of the things that made me think the book might have been better served to be published as historical fiction rather than romance, but I feel like the romance categories have kind of bloomed out and eaten the category of general/historical fiction that has romance and isn't super-serious or literary? I guess this is an effect of romance being the only branch of trad publishing that is actually turning profits these days.
Something I didn't get into in the synopsis above is that Noah's family are the kind of people who would normally be shown to be right about everything in historical fiction: Unitarians, the father is a doctor who accepts Noah being a tailor, the sister is a dress reformer who's become a doctor herself. And they both accept that Noah's gay, but at the same time ... they don't quite. They want him to be a staid, academically gay guy who writes columns about how pure his love his for a similarly staid partner. They don't quite like that he's flamboyant and goes to the Fox, and they don't like Noah's attachment to David, who's now quite disreputable and who they think pulled Noah into this kind of life. There's an excellent scene where Noah tells them both off for it, and I LOVED it. It was a level of nuance I don't expect from historical fiction in general, and historical romance particularly.
The dark stuff also seemed to be handled with a really nice touch, because there's some HEAVY stuff here that Everlee doesn't delve into but also doesn't seem to be avoiding - it's just that less is more. David's father was abusive and you can see how it's affected David, but we never see him on the page, let alone actively hurting David. Belleville clearly took advantage of David at a bad time, and that comes through, but David doesn't really perceive it that way. We hardly see Belleville at all, but his menace comes through in the few scenes where he's present and in David's actions when he's not. It's so clear that David was fucked up by his family and that it's helped him get into this mess. One of the things that made me sit up and take notice most was when Noah came back from Italy to find David working as a waiter in a rougher gay bar - and there's also another scene where David kind of sums up what happened and doesn't even realize that he's stabbing Noah in the feels by implying that if Noah had only stayed with him or invited him more directly to come, things could have been fine. It all adds up to my wanting fic of this book, which is not something I often feel about romance novels. And to a recommendation of this if you like hurt/comfort.
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Date: 2023-07-30 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-06 04:40 pm (UTC)