This little story was impressively emotional for its size. I love the way this author builds a scene and, in a little 89 page novella with just a handful of them, these scenes all packed a punch.

And the tropes were great—she was supposed to marry someone else, she was an aristocrat secretly earning an income as an artist, he was just a third son, her father would never approve, there was a hint of second chance. Lovely!

Everything was perfect… Except for one thing. That I hated with every fibre of my being.

The book was trying to tell me that he was a virgin MMC. And that she was an experienced FMC. Except she’d had one non-O, meh encounter. And he’d given and received oral so many times he'd lost count of how many women he’d been with.

Hate hate hate. I mean, virginity is a meaningless social construct but when virginity = P in V and only P in V, smoke starts coming out of my ears. It’s an involuntary response.