CAT SEBASTIAN (Seducing the Sedgwicks #3)
Avon Impulse
$3.99 ebook editions, available now
Today, 31 March 22, it's only $1.99 on Kindle!
Rating: 4.75* of five
The Publisher Says: Will Sedgwick can’t believe that after months of searching for his oldest friend, Martin Easterbrook is found hiding in an attic like a gothic nightmare. Intent on nursing Martin back to health, Will kindly kidnaps him and takes him to the countryside to recover, well away from the world.
Martin doesn’t much care where he is or even how he got there. He’s much more concerned that the man he’s loved his entire life is currently waiting on him hand and foot, feeding him soup and making him tea. Martin knows he’s a lost cause, one he doesn’t want Will to waste his life on.
As a lifetime of love transforms into a tender passion both men always desired but neither expected, can they envision a life free from the restrictions of the past, a life with each other?
LIBRARIES ARE AWESOME! USE YOURS MORE OFTEN, THEY NEED US! And see my reviews of the first two books in the series here.
My Review: First, read this:
“Which poor man?” Will asked carefully.
“The man who—he lives in the Alps and has an overbearing father.”
Will closed the book. “I think we’ll leave the rest of this novel for when you’re more lucid,” he said, his mouth twitching in a badly suppressed smile, “but I will always cherish the description of Victor Frankenstein as an overbearing parent.”
–and–
He knew Will liked women, but that didn’t mean he only liked women. Martin was fairly sure he himself liked women as much as he liked men, which was to say not particularly much. He supposed he was capable of being attracted to anybody, as long as they were Will Sedgwick.
–and–
“If you can be stupid for me, then I can be stupid for you.”
“You’re stupid no matter what you do,” Will said, trying very hard to sound like he wasn’t about to cry.
There's no escaping it: Will Sedgwick has *terrible* taste in men. He is in love, and really always has been, with Sir Martin Easterbrook. "Sir" Martin (a busted-flat baronet), on the other hand, is mean, grouchy, anti-social, and equally in love with Will. Tell me those quotes don't feel deeply familiar from one or another of your bygone youth's loves!
But they've both been through the mills...they've each got a family secret...and neither one will drop his guard. Because, y'know, reasons. Like Martin is dying of consumption, the Regency equivalent of AIDS in the 1980s: Invariably fatal, of unknown cause, and really really bad news.
People been people forever, don't you know. The two could sort everything out by simply opening up their respective yaps. Will they? Why would they? Neither has any slightest belief that the other could possibly be interested in him that way.
That tension, familiar as it is to most all of us, does wear thin. The subject of "do you/don't you—will you/won't you" loses a certain amount of urgency once one learns that rejection and embarrassment aren't fatal. They are unpleasant, and never stop being so. But Will and Martin are still feeling as though the stakes are too damned high and so they're too scared to get the job done...until they're not, and what a relief it is! (To all of us, I mean, not just them.)
What's most poignant to me, what moves me very deeply, is that above-mentioned similarity to AIDS. I lost two loves and a lot of friends to that plague. And these lines:
On a good day Will barely felt competent to manage his own life, and being responsible for another person’s—the most precious person’s—was daunting at best. He was not in the habit of eating regular meals or keeping predictable hours, but now he had to keep track of Martin’s medicines and make sure he drank and ate a few times a day. And Martin fought him every step of the way, as if Will’s ministrations were an annoyance, as if he wished Will had left him to rot in London.
–and–
Will stared hard at his friend, saw how his profile was caught in the setting sun, and was struck by how fleeting this all could be. A chill, a cough, and Martin could be gone. He was filled with a wave of—not sorrow, because the time for that had come and gone—but the urge to make this count. If their time was finite, then he ought to—he didn’t know what. He ought to take these tiny incandescent moments and figure out a way to hold them in his heart.
Well, they just couldn't have been more perfectly tuned to twang my sentimental old fools of heartstrings. Yes indeed, Author Cat, you caused a barely-sublethal crying jag, you did you did. And isn't that what the word "catharsis" was coined to describe.
This is a category romance, so we know the ending will include the men being together. It isn't kind of me to take you on the whole cruise, so I'll just note that once The Deed is done, there is no magical sunshine lollipops and rainbows effect...they still don't possess an ounce of sense between them. "Just SAY IT!!!" I came close to screaming at the silly buffoons. But they aren't, buffoons that is, and they aren't any different from many, many abused men I've known. They simply can't articulate the feeling of wanting something without choking on it. Very common, I'm afraid. But...and this is important...hang tight. The ending...well, house martins and sweet williams will always have a bit of extra luster in my eyes.
And, while another story won the 33rd Lammy Award for Gay Romance, this one is always going to win in my heart.
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