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thegreatmanda 's review for:

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles
5.0
adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
Charmed, delighted, entranced, and driven to order the conclusion to this duology before I was halfway through this book. This pulled me into the world of Romney Marsh and its families and characters so fully and I knew I wouldn't be ready to leave them after only one story.

Joss and Gareth are so sexy and sweet together from the very beginning, and I love that this story actually starts with the usual romance novel trope of The Big Hurt, when their lives and pasts and expectations of the world push them to hurt each other. I'm usually cringing as I read any romance, waiting for the Big Secret or Betrayal or Argument to hit after spending 85% of the book feeling invested in the growing relationship. It was a relief to watch these two come out of the gate swinging and then learn to understand and communicate with one another over time, and that relief only grew as I got to know them.

They are just so incredibly sweet together. The way Joss reads Gareth’s isolation and surprise at being wanted, even from their first meeting, got deep into my heart. Joss can be a hard man in a fight, and has so many blind spots when it comes to the people close to him, that for him to see Gareth so clearly was touching enough already—and then so much more so when I realized he was the first person in Gareth's lifetime who ever had.

Joss takes it for granted that his clan takes care of their own and of Marsh folk; that’s the idea of family that he’s grown up used to and sees as correct. Gareth has grown up unwanted and abandoned by the people who should have naturally been his safety net no matter what, so of course, even when Joss promises that Gareth is a part of Dymchurch and one of the Doomsdays’ own by virtue of that alone, Gareth doesn’t know how to accept it without wondering what it will cost him. His own father never offered him an ounce of care, so why should he look for it in others? I love when characters coming from such different backgrounds, equally heartbreaking in their own ways, grow together to find a middle ground.

On top of all that, we also get a genuinely exciting story with mystery and skullduggery afoot. I can't wait to see what the second volume has in store for Joss and Gareth and Romney Marsh.

Favorite Quotes:

The touch of his hands, the wonder in his eyes, the astonishing sense of familiarity, as though he and Gareth had somehow slipped past one another all their lives and their meeting was long overdue.

"God, I'm sorry, Joss. You have quite enough on your plate without me piling all this on you."
"I've plenty. Only that plate's a trencher I share with my family and my people and most of the Marsh." He put a careful hand to Gareth's face. "Whereas with you, that's just for me."
Gareth's lips rounded. "I...I would like to be just for you."
That got into Joss's lungs like Marsh mist, making it oddly hard to breathe.

"I love your hair."
"I like yours. Would you wear it longer, ever?"
Gareth had kept it in an unexuberant Brutus for some years. Uncle Henry had not encouraged poetical indulgences in his clerks' appearances. "I hadn't thought of doing so. Would you like it longer?"
"It's your head. But I do like something to get hold of."
He was growing it out, Gareth decided, starting now.

His only human encounter was with Pagan d'Aumesty, one of the Earl of Oxney's more peculiar relatives, who was wandering along High Knock Channel poking vaguely at the sides of the stream with a stick.
Gareth halted. "Good morning, sir."
"Eh? Oh. You're, uh..."
"Gareth Inglis. I came to tea with the Earl in March."
"No. No, that's not it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'll have it in a minute. Let me see, you are—"
"Gareth Inglis," Gareth said with extreme clarity.
"Ah, I have it! You are Gareth Inglis," Pagan informed him. "Are you looking for your father? He's just around here, I believe."
"I...I'm afraid he's dead, sir."
"Just around here." Pagan gestured in the vague direction of the Isle. "I saw him—now, was it today?"
"No, because he's dead?" Somehow that had become a question. "He's dead," Gareth repeated more firmly. "He's been dead for months."
"Are you sure?"
Gareth dug his fingernails into his palm against the wholly inappropriate laugh that wanted to bubble up. "Quite sure, yes."
"Hmph. That seems very odd of him."
"I do apologise," Gareth said hopelessly.
"We had been discussing my researches. I wanted to tell him about the progress of the project. I wondered why he had not visited." There was a distinct suggestion that Sir Hugo's death was insufficient excuse. "Really, it is most inconvenient. I wished him to assist in illustrating my theory."
"What theory is that, sir?" Gareth asked, out of politeness that he was very rapidly to regret, and then stood subject to ten minutes of monologue on Romano-British Mithraic mysteries before he was forced to remember an urgent appointment.

He pushed his face into Joss's hair. "I feel right here. I feel right with you."

"What's happened to you?"
"You," Joss said simply, and kissed him.

He couldn't describe the heart-stopping magic of it. The man he'd just met, the one he hadn't known he'd been looking for, right there in front of him.

"It's stupid how I love you. Baronet, for mercy's sake. I've got no business loving you, and I can't seem to do a blessed thing else."

"I won't lie," Joss went on inaccurately.

"I said I wouldn't leave you," Joss said. "I won't. Not till you make me, and you'll have to try middling hard on that."