A MINOR INCONVENIENCE, charming Regency spy story seasoned with gayness

A MINOR INCONVENIENCE
SARAH GRANGER
Entangled: Select Historical
$3.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A French musket ball to the leg takes Captain Hugh Fanshawe from the battlefield and leaves him enduring long, quiet days compiling paperwork at Horse Guards headquarters. He knows his lameness makes him the object of pity and distaste at the stifling social engagements he dutifully escorts his mother and sister to, but everything in his orderly life changes when Colonel Theo Lindsay arrives.

Theo is everything Hugh is not. He’s a man of physical perfection and an enjoyable companion, and their friendship deepens into love. But when the army suspects there’s a French spy at Horse Guards, Hugh discovers nothing is as it seems, and the paper he shuffles daily could save his lover’s life.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: A steamless spy drama set in an underused Napoleonic Wars setting, with a lovely little gay romance on top of it. The men who fall in love aren't in rut, they're in a more Heyeresque kind of connection. The author uses on-page euphemism, as opposed to more old-fashioned "the fire flickered and died," to gloss over the physicality of sexual activity. Even a visit to a molly-house is...social, not exclusively sexual. Hugh meets Theo there, yet does not connect this to Theo's later act of seeking him out at the workplace they share.

It is the kind of story I enjoy, set in what feels like a reasonably accurate Regency re-creation. I didn't point and laugh at the...heightened...Heyerlike language, which is a feat. Trying to make champagne with Thompson seedless grapes is usually how the imitators come across; Author Granger, not so much. The spirited exchanges are there to keep me entertained while thinking "shouldn't they be fucking?"

If you're not interested in the steamier side of a story, this one will keep you busy with Hugh's idolizing of Theo as a dashing, omnicompetent godlike beauty. With his serious self-image problems. With his wounded-warrior syndrome. There is a lot to be recovering from after being crippled by a war wound, and by a lifetime of being told you're wrong just for existing.

Add in some amusing family shenanigans (his younger sister keeps Hugh and his mother on the hop, steering her away from trouble), and there was enough oddness with his friend Emily and her ambiguously intentioned attention to him to keep subplots going.

What there is not is the always desirable HEA, because that was not on offer in 1810s England. If Hugh and Thheo transgress bounds of propriety in their attention to each other, they face dreadful consequences. This results in HFN endings being the best one can hope for in this milieu...if that's a deal-breaker, be alert for it now.

A good historical story without sexual content beyond social bounds.