This is the second book in a series, following on from <I>The Vicar and the Rake</i> though with mostly different characters - the basic premise of this series is that it's set within an exclusive gentlemen's club for men who like men and each one seems focussed on one of the surviving members. This time it's the turn of Captain Benjamin Frakes, war hero and semi-recluse, who's turned his unwilling hand to dealing with the day to day bureaucracy of running such an establishment.

Into Frakes' life comes the delightful August Weatherby, who's determined to crack through the captain's taciturn shell - unfortunately, he's doing it for all the wrong reasons, in that he's been asked to find blackmail material on the captain and his friends. Weatherby is desperate for money to support his sister, who is very ill, and finds himself stuck between wanting to help her and his growing attraction to/obsession with Frakes.

This is a well-plotted story and just about manages to get through the tangles of falling in love with your potential blackmailer to a happy ending on the other side. Just about and I'm not sure I'm 100% convinced by it.

My other caveat for this book is the sex scenes, again for the same reasons I highlighted when I reviewed the previous book in the series. For a virgin, which Weatherby absolutely is and tells Frakes on multiple occasions, a quick jump to repeated sex with only spit for lubrication seems a little drastic. But then this is romance land, I suppose, where excellent and pain-free sex is potentially all part of the fantasy.

This is the second entry in the author's Society of Beasts series featuring M/M Regency Historical Romance and is a pleasure to read. August Weatherby is a man with many debts and secrets to go along with them, who finds himself needing to compromise a national war hero, Captain Benjamin Frakes. But the two are surprised to realize they share an attraction that will not go away no matter how hard each tries to deny it. The book is filled with appealing characters and also dangerous ones, and the resolution and epilogue are extremely satisfying. The ending sets up the next story, one I am very much looking forward to in the future.

4 stars

A very emotionally touching & satisfying love story heightened with dark secrets & intrigue!

[What I liked:]

•The starlings are a lovely touch! A devoted group of children allies is, I think, a unique element. And very charming.

•I really liked both Frakes & August. Both have their walls up for understandable reasons, which made it all the more meaningful when they made the decision to be vulnerable. Both have compelling stakes & motivations driving them. I empathized with them both.

•Josiah was a great side character, who wasn’t just there to fill out the background but played a role in various strands of the plot & relationship development.

•The Society with all the ceremony, costumes, secret passages, etc. was a fun setting! And oh my, visiting Lambert’s grave was a brilliant way to stoke the narrative tension!

•There is lots of angst, & I was worried at the beginning that the story would devolve into a frustrating mess of refusal to communicate & infuriating stubbornness that so often goes along with the “deep, dark secrets” plot line. Refreshingly, there was a bright happiness in the midst of the deception that kept things more wistful than full blown angsty.

•The ending resolution was believable & fitting & also not over the top nasty or grudge holding. Thank goodness. I feel like it’s a fine line with betrayal plot lines, but this book handled it nicely.

•Possibly the sweetest & most touching epilogue ever?? Like it resonated & wasn’t too gooey sappy lovey dovey & also thoughtfully resolved a source of narrative tension that had been a running undercurrent throughout the story? I usually hate epilogues, but I was impressed by this one.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•My fault for jumping into a series in the middle, but I didn’t understand Eustace’s motivations until nearly the end of the book. That could perhaps have been made a bit more clear at the beginning. I did get that he was bad news though, so my cluelessness did not detract from the sense of danger facing the MC’s.

•The parts where Frakes has internal dialogues was confusing at first. I couldn’t tell if the book had suddenly jumped into magical realism & he was conversing with real ghosts, or if he was just imagining what absent friends would have advised him.

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]