I really enjoyed this m/m regency romance! Gareth and Joss were both immensely lovable characters and all the side characters were also delightful! This is going to be a series and I definitely am looking forward to more!

Thank you to Sourcebooks Casablanca and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

"The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen" is a sweet and spicy tale full of danger, both physical and emotional. I adored all the characters and their complexities, and the mystery kept me engaged throughout.

This book is best described as a historical romance between a baronet with daddy issues and a smuggler with a heart of gold. I loved how immediately Gareth and Joss were drawn to each other, but still taking their time to figure out how to be truly vulnerable and to lean on one another.

KJ Charles always writes the perfect balance of spice, mystery, and truly heartfelt moments. There is also lovely humour woven throughout the story, which I always appreciate, especially to lighten some of the tougher topics.

Fans of historical fiction, mystery, and queer romance will appreciate this well-crafted story about two men trying to find themselves and each other in a world that is harsh and dangerous. I highly recommend "The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen" for your next read as you wander the Marsh hunting for beetles (or true love).

Gareth Inglis is estranged from his father and living a marginal life in London, working for his uncle as a law clerk and looking for companionship in the city's gay underworld. He has a romantic encounter with a visitor from the marsh country, but a misunderstanding pushes them apart. When his father dies suddenly, Gareth finds himself in possession of a title, a country estate, a sister, and wealth. Life in the country is a lot different than Gareth expected but as he slowly learns the pleasures of country living, he also begins to suspect that his father was not only selfish man, but may have been a traitor to his country as well.

Boy meets boy in this LGBTQ romance/adventure novel that is the first book of a duology. I'm not much of a romance reader, but I had read another of the author's novels (The Magpie Lord, a gay fantasy/romance), so when NetGalley offered an eARC of her upcoming book, I decided to give it a try. Good characters (although there are a lot of Doomsdays) including strong female characters, interesting circumstances and descriptions, good writing. I hope the author will continue to explore her characters' lives in the next book. Be advised there is graphic gay sex starting on about page three with a lot more in the last half of the book. Doesn't bother me but more sensitive readers may take offense.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

I received a copy from NetGalley for review.

I ended up DNF'ing this at 33%. Not because it's bad, or badly written, but simply because this book isn't for me. I didn't really enjoy Gareth as a main character (I actually find him more on the annoying side than anything) and it made it very difficult to want to continue reading. I'm sure there's definitely someone out there that will love the romance between Gareth and Joss, it's just not for me.

I did enjoy the first encounter between them when Joss is trying to help Sophy. It was kind of funny and the secondhand embarrassment was real. That being said, I do think that if the whole thing was told from Joss's POV I would have devoured the whole thing. There's just something about scoundrels that makes me like reading from their POV's more than those of the upper class.

Gareth and Joss meet in London, it’s a one night stand and although it’s definitely feels like more, they live in different places so this is all that they’ll ever have.
Couple months pass and Gareth gets news, his father has passed and he has inherited a Baronet title in Kent. Little did he knows, this will take him to the marsh we’re he’s supposed to be… with Joss.
I truly enjoyed this story, it’s lovely to see MM romance in an antique era. The characters were amazing. Their walks around the marsh looking for newts and bugs, their neighbors hunting for gold… Gareth getting acquainted with his new title and extended family. Joss being a strong man and all in for Garreth. So good! Loved their rings… IYKYK

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen is an absolute delight. It's full of action, sweeping romance, and long conversations that just make me swoon. I love a brilliant, action-packed romance. There's plenty of mysteries here, which drive Gareth and Joss work together despite them being so opposite - Gareth the newly promoted baronet and Joss the smuggling prince.

Sir Gareth Inglis and Joss Doomsday are opposite of each other in many aspects but oh so perfect together. They have incredible chemistry, which makes their interactions intense whether it's arguments or love scenes. KJ Charles's storytelling is truly engaging; I could barely put the book down and I lived through Gareth and Joss's emotions. It's glorious! Combine a great, unforgettable romance with action, mystery, and enchanting sense of scenery, and you get The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen.

What do you get when put two rival smuggling families, a former law clerk with a recently acquired baronetcy, some interesting beetles, and thousands of pounds of ill-gotten treasure on an isolated Kentish marsh together?

ROLLICKING GOOD FUN, that’s what, lol.

I really enjoyed this. It’s incredibly romantic, wildly tense and dramatic, and the dynamic between the two leads can’t be described in any other way but *chef’s kiss*. It’s not a dynamic I’ve seen very often in romance — short king charming crime boss with a heart of gold / tall soft naturalist baronet with a nervous disposition — LMAO I’m laughing even typing that — but it’s SO good! This book manages to do things against a historical backdrop that the other regency romances I’ve read haven’t managed to pull off — a convincing cross-class relationship, non-white major characters, and a high-stakes crime-related plot that actually makes sense and plays into the internal conflicts within the relationship. The “diverse” elements of this book (that’s an annoying way to put it but I’m not sure how else to) feel woven into the scenery, not like flashing lights to alert us that DIVERSITY is happening. The characters also don’t feel like their views are shoe-horned in from 2023, which is one of my biggest pet peeves in historical romances.

What I will say is that readers shouldn’t look to this book for a Bridgerton clone (I saw Bridgerton being used as a comp in the marketing copy). There is no ton, no parties or balls, and really almost nothing in the way of ruling class nonsense. I love ruling class nonsense as much as the next romance-obsessed person, but this book is doing something different and just as fun with the historical setting. Where this book overlaps with Bridgerton is in the regency setting and the interracial relationships — and this book handles the interracial aspect much better than Bridgerton, in that it’s actually tied to real history.

I could see the smuggling/crime plot dragging this down a bit for people, and there were parts when I was reading it as quickly as possible to get back to the romance. I glossed over Joss and Gareth’s political arguments a bit. But I have to give the author props for the amount of research that must have gone into that, and the payoff, when everything comes to a head in the last 25% of the book, is thrilling.

From a steam perspective, there is a lot of it, which I love. Some of the (probably historically accurate) wording used was a bit of a turn off for me, but nothing bad enough to ruin the truly beautiful relationship between the leads.

This was a blast and I will definitely be checking out the author’s other work. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am a big KJ Charles fan, so I was delighted to get an ARC of The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen . In getting it, I was particularly excited to look for two things. First, having now consumed a significant chunk of KJC backlist, I was curious how her newest would engage the themes and motifs I now easily recognize as hallmarks of her writing. And second, I was curious what the turn to major trad-pub would mean, mostly because I enjoy thinking about how work is positioned for the particularities of its anticipated audience and publishing trajectory.

The short version of these musings is: I am delighted to report that this book has enough of what makes KJ Charles KJ Charles to satisfy her many devoted fans. And it also makes a lot of canny choices to entice and keep a new set of readers. That said, it didn't necessarily land for *me personally* as well as some of her other work- there's a particular alchemy to the balance of romance emotion and plot pressure that hits a very specific way in my favorites of hers, that didn't quite work here. But I still enjoyed it immensely, and think a lot of other readers, both the new and the longtime devotees, will find a lot to love.

There is, as ever, quite a lot of plot, and I'm going to try not to bog my review down with the details. Our two MCs, Gareth and Joss, start out the book known to each other only as "London" and "Kent," two men having a brief tryst and catching unexpected levels of feelings. Unfortunately, both tryst and feelings are interrupted by real life: Joss is called back home, Gareth is too hurt and guarded to admit he wants to keep in touch, and then Gareth himself has some things to face as he discovers his father has died and left him a baronetcy in Romney Marsh.

This is, of course, precisely where Joss has been called home to.

Cue life keeping Joss and Gareth on opposite sides of just about everything: Joss is a smuggler and Gareth is a baronet, Garteth is outmarsh and Joss is a veritable local institution, Gareth's a law-and-order type and Joss is... not, as as the plot unfurls, it turns out Gareth's inheritance includes the repercussions of some VERY unsavory dealings with Joss's family's main rivals.

The biggest thing differentiating them, however, is their relationship to family, and I found the KJ Charles treatment of biological family as a major theme to be really interesting (and not something I think of as a main concern of hers usually?). To put it simply: Gareth has been shaped by an absence of family, and Joss by a surfeit thereof. Gareth was essentially abandoned by his father, shipped off to an uncle who didn't care for him, and then returns to his "family" home to find mostly people who wish he wasn't there, to varying degrees of murderousness. Joss, on the other hand, runs his entire sprawling smuggler family (both biological and non) and is trying to put up with the pressure of being answerable to and responsible for everyone. Both men, from opposite directions of the issue, desperately need and want someone who is "just for them" and find it in each other.

This is, I thought, a really compelling conflict, and one which allows the author to spin out a gentle romance built on a lot of love and care. It was also intriguing to me how both men were yearning for a kind of traditional stability within recognizable family structures, even if they have to carve their own pathway into it. It makes sense given their family histories, but it definitely felt like an intriguing thematic departure to me! I won't spoil anything, but the ending plays very closely to a lot of traditional regency HEA tropes - with a twist - in a way that I do imagine will land well for readers with a more mainstream regency reading background. And, of course, it comes with an underpinning of a lot of more usual KJC questions (what can love look like across social class? where do our MCs situate "morality" against "legality" and how do they negotiate that calculus in a fundamentally unjust world?) that her regular readers will revel in.

The one area where this didn't *quite* work for me though is that... while there's clearly a compelling internal emotional arc to this book, and while it's obviously related to the plot (the smuggling shenanigans all have implications for both Joss and Gareth's places in their families).... there's such an incredible surfeit of plot points that they kind of bury the mystery-plot-to-romance-emotions pipeline that I need to sustain real feelings. It left me feeling both vaguely disconnected from the romance at times, and slightly exasperated with the lack of space to invest in any one plot thread at others.

What it comes down to, I think, is this. KJ Charles is always grappling with social class and legality/morality in her work, and that's always coming from a combination of the "internal/emotional/romance" plot and the "external/action-packed/suspense" plot. In her best books, the two are thematically related, and that's the case here. In my *favorite* of her books, the plot-plot is ruthlessly streamlined to serve the emotional impact of the romance-plot, and I didn't find that to be the case in The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen . There was, if nothing else, simply too much else going on for the romance to really shine. That is, it has to be said, a very personal and kind of picky thing! But it's why I found this book enjoyable, well-executed, cleverly pitched for both old and new readers alike, and yet not necessarily a candidate for my pantheon of KJC forever-favorites. Still, a thoroughly lovely reading experience.

Joss and Gareth meet in a time honored tradition -in a pub. No names are exchanged and both thoroughly enjoy themselves and go their own separate sad ways. Until...life intervenes.

I loved the dialogue and the setting. I've been to Kent but not like this. I learned several new words, another-when and otherwhere, and Gareth was perfectly adorable with exploring for his beetles and newts. Joss took Gareth to find bugs and that was the perfect date. The cover was fantastic, but could have used beetles and newts!

The underlying smuggling and Gareth's father's shenanigans gave a bit of mystery to solve. I will say that I'm completely fine with the way the story ended with a "happy for now" but I'm very curious about guineas and how their relationship evolves in the public eye. I'm not sure if there's another book or if there would be a story about secondary characters, but I'm not ready to leave the Doomsdays or Cecy, Catherine, Luke, or Asa yet. Perfect amount of steam and angst. I love the communication style between Gareth and Joss.

I just loved this book. London and Kent are my everything. Politics, adventure, finding yourself, finding home, a bit of spice and a whole lot of love.

ARC from NetGalley

Review on goodreads and StoryGraph

This book was just so multifaceted and interesting. The romantic leads each came with their own emotional baggage, as in any worthy romance, but they also had political views and thoughts and hobbies. I enjoyed reading about Gareth's explorations of the Marshland fauna and Joss's political opinions, and seeing the characters argue and bond over these subjects gave their romantic scenes more depth.

Speaking of the romance, it was great. Gareth and Joss felt like a truly compatible couple, and their love story was affectionate as well as spicy. The obstacles in their relationship arose naturally from their histories and circumstances, and although I never doubted they would end up together (it's a romance novel, after all), the smuggling mystery as so diverting that it stole the show. The whole thing wrapped up nicely, with just enough loose ends to feel realistic... and leave room for a sequel.

When it’s time to branch out from the Bridgerton series, KJ Charles’s new book is the one to open!

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen includes everything amazing about regency romances. There’s a son who inherits his less than loving father’s money, a scandal, smugglers, and of course some spice!

While the novel’s plot was slow at the beginning, the growing chemistry between forbidden lovers Gareth and Joss is worth the wait. Fans of the hit show Our Flag Means Death may be reminded of Steve Bonnet and Blackbeard, as these opposites fiercely attract!

Whether you’re brand new to historical romances, or your shelves are overflowing, be sure to pick up a copy of this new series on March 7th!

Many thanks to Sourcebooks Casablanca and NetGalley for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Reading this felt like watching a BBC mini series or PBS Masterpiece special, and I mean that in a good way!

If you like books with a strong sense of place, found family, and steamy scenes this historical is for you.

I love, love, LOVED this! The story, the romance, and the setting gripped me from the start, and I already know I will return to it again in the future. It has action and intrigue while giving all the feels, and I couldn't help but imagine I was there running around the marsh with Gareth and Joss. I adored them both, I adored the cast of characters (so many of them deserve their own book!), and I'd recommend this story for fans of second-chance romance, found family, lots of drama, and anyone looking for a Historical Romance set outside of London. I cannot wait for book #2!

Thank you to Sourcebooks Casablanca via Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen was one of my favorite reads of the year. I adored everything about this book
– the sweet, earnest, and well-developed romance between Gareth and Joss
– the whodunit plot
– the contrast and thoughtful questions brought up on classism, elitism, and gender
– how the Marsh is just as much of a setting as its own character

I cannot gush about this book enough. Highly recommend it for fans of Bridgerton and historical romance. This is my first KJ Charles book and I cannot wait to read more! A big thank you to Sourcebooks for the review copy.

I don't have enough words to accurately describe how much I LOVE KJ Charles! These books are just...chef's kiss!! Gareth & Joss (AKA London and Kent) are just delightful, beautiful characters and I hope they have a series of adventures because I'm here for ALL of it!!

Gareth believes that even though his life has been a constant hardship, he’s an upstanding man. So when he comes across a group of smugglers, one that he had already met, he finds himself at odds. Joss embarrassed Gareth in front of an entire courtroom. With their past, he never would have thought that possible. Now Gareth wants nothing to do with Joss and his smuggling family. Sometimes fate has other plans.

I never read historical romance, but the cover and description drew me in. I enjoyed the mystery element more than the romance, but the lovers, to enemies, to lovers angle was a fun twist on the usual trope. I’m happy I read this because it was such a fun read. Thank you, Sourcebooks Casablanca, for the ARC.

This was such a great historical romance, that really had the feel of a cozy mystery! With plenty of spice, this m/m romance kept me glued to my seat with the mystery of everything.

I loved the side characters in this book, the Doomsday family was so interesting!

Joss and Gareth, I loved that this book mostly centered on them working together, and there wasn’t a ton a drama between the two of them. Yes, there was moments of miscommunication, and other things, but I always enjoy romances more when the couple can work through issues (or mysteries) as a team.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author, but it will not be the last. I’m definitely looking forward to reading additional books in this series.

I enjoyed this book. I had a good time with the romance and I liked both main characters. I would recommend this to fans of Victorian era historical romance.

4 stars

I know I can always count on KJ Charles to do something innovative with her historical romances and The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen is no exception. Set in Romney Marsh on the remote English coast, this book offers a delightful lovers to enemies back to lovers romance between a newly minted baronet longing for connection and the head of a smuggling clan who had been his anonymous lover in London.

The world of Romney Marsh is unlike anything I have read in historical romance with smugglers and lords living side by side in relative harmony under a code of unwritten laws and traditions sacred to all who hope to thrive there. Both the romance and the mystery plot are given equal weight throughout, providing great moments of action and beautiful moments of intimacy. I devoured this book in just a little over a day and I'm bummed that I have to wait until September to read the sequel!

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!