THE GENTLE ART OF FORTUNE HUNTING, exciting and artful while showing sharp teeth

THE GENTLE ART OF FORTUNE HUNTING
K.J. CHARLES
KJC Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Robin Loxleigh and his sister Marianne are the hit of the Season, so attractive and delightful that nobody looks behind their pretty faces.

Until Robin sets his sights on Sir John Hartlebury’s heiress niece. The notoriously graceless baronet isn’t impressed by good looks, or fooled by false charm. He’s sure Robin is a liar—a fortune hunter, a card sharp, and a heartless, greedy fraud—and he’ll protect his niece, whatever it takes.

Then, just when Hart thinks he has Robin at his mercy, things take a sharp left turn. And as the grumpy baronet and the glib fortune hunter start to understand each other, they also find themselves starting to care—more than either of them thought possible.

But Robin's cheated and lied and let people down for money. Can a professional rogue earn an honest happy ever after?

THIS WAS A LOVELY SURPRISE GIFT FROM MY YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANK YOU, MY LOVE.

My Review: It requires a particular kind of innocence and faith to be a gambler. I have never had that innocence and I don't think the gods like it when one uses words like "faith" in connection to cynical, bitter people like me. So the fact that a significant portion of this tale takes place in gambling hells and among those who see some...merit? value?...in the damnfoolishness of gambling chafed on my nerve. I was, of course, perfectly prepared for the fortune hunting. After all, it's in the title. And I myownself have never had any negative judgment of fortune hunters who live up to their bargain. (I also see no problem with porn models and other sex workers getting paid to do things I did for free back when there was interest in having me do them. To me, it means they're better at business than I was, not immoral or broken or bad.)

An entirely different conversation, one far more impassioned and full of moral thunderation, would be had if we were to discuss the system that makes these options not only viable but desirable and even, on sadly frequent occasions, necessary. That is not where we are in this particular Regency romance.

It does, however, come very close to being the conversation that Robin and Hart end up having, in several different forms, several different times. What makes the read worth its frustrations (I am impatient in the face of self-righteousness and annoyed by selfish, self-serving blinders on powerful people) is the fact that Author Charles writes the scenes of conflict between privileged and petitioner without for a moment forgetting that each is, in the final analysis, correct; only their viewpoints need to be altered, their idées fixes challenged at the source. And it's no surprise to me that Author Charles knows the essential truth of change: to work, it has to be to not merely from. Which requires a huge jolt of Want. A clinging tendril of need can't help but speed up the fall of the old and the triumph of the new.

Does anyone know a better way to add powerful want and many tendrils of need than to use sex? I don't. And with Hart's Position and his Code, well...them changes were a-gonna smother before moving anything a millimeter. Robin's wantonness, his unfeigned joy in the glorious work of sensual pleasure, means he is in a unique and effective position (!) to effect badly needed, salubrious changes in the essentially caring heart within Hart.

“Sorry? You want to kiss me?”

Hart was still looking away, but Robin could see his ears redden. “You need not, if it is not to your taste.”

“Jesus wept. Of course it is to my taste. I thought it would be spikes and a dildo.” Hart made a spluttering noise.

There it is. Reduced to its essence, there is the book: Are we having the same conversation about the same subject? Do we trust each other enough to find out? And in the end, are there words for what we need...from Life, from each other?

Finding one whose ability to offer that which one actually needs and still isn't overmatched by their own needs...that is a dim, receding dream for many, if not most, people throughout history. It makes the offer of Happily Ever After one of the romance genre's sweetest siren songs. Add onto that dismal truth the way the world has (and still does) treat gay men...the need for a dose of unreality in the form of seeing others, imperfect others more like we actually are, succeed in its attainment is ever urgent. This story's achievement of the HEA is quite dramatic, very theatrical, and damn near begs to be committed to film. I'm not at all sure the sex scenes would make it onto the screen...hell, I'm quite sure they would not because the sex...it's really not suitable for straight people. I can say that, while I get it and would never demand that straight people open their minds a bit more as a group, some of the more willing to challenge their boundaries would do very well to make this book a toe-dipper into thinking without judgment about gay sex. There is absolutely no coercion, no forcing, no shortage of imaginative and playful coupling in the story. I think many IRL couples could do worse than emulate Hart and Robin's ways and means.

Why I'm rating this four stars, instead of the five it sounds like I'm awarding, is easily explained: These men are damned abrasive. The effort of reading while screaming in the first third of the story told against the thrill of the ball. It's not like everyone needs to be likeable or that all the traffic lights need to turn green immediately...the struggle to connect was effective, and it felt as though this HEA was earned.

The problem was the relentlessly self-righteous Hart and the revoltingly self-serving Robin. It was sold to me as "this is how these men are." It wasn't ever UNsold. It was a lot to ask me to simply...jettison...all that, even with the later pillow talk that blew the cobwebs away. Had it been more evenly apportioned throughout the book, say to other characters as well not simply the men in their safe cocoon sharing, I might've been less brought up short at the ball scene's events. I might've been more willing to invest in that sharing. As it was, I was already too set in my response of them being damaged to shift easily into feeling them to be as wounded, hurt as they each actually were.

It is not a fatal flaw. It was a case of seeing the road to the highest peak go on after I got off the ride. And yet, make no mistake, I'd go on the ride again! This read was a pleasure and a badly needed one for me. Author Charles makes her stories fizz and snap and sparkle. Come join the fun with this one.