THE GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO VICE AND VIRTUE, a New Adult MM historical romantic novel

THE GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO VICE AND VIRTUE
MACKENZI LEE
Katherine Tegen Books
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men.

But as Monty embarks on his Grand Tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.

Still it isn’t in Monty’s nature to give up. Even with his younger sister, Felicity, in tow, he vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt that spans across Europe, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A GIFT FROM MY OLD PAL, NORA. THANK YOU, YOU SWEET THING. *SMOOCH*

My Review: My feelings about this read have percolated for a long time now. I didn't like it much at first. I felt radically impatient by page 346 of 501 (last story-page; there's a meaty Author's Note to take us to page 513). I know that stonking great wodges of hard-bound paper are very much in fashion in this market segment, and that the world is a better place because the books that are so huge are also stuffed with People of Color (and a gay PoC in this iteration!), women with Dreams (medicine as a woman's career makes sense to me, since every mother I've ever known plays doctor constantly to all her kids plus their dad), and persons belonging to sexual minorities (Henry is bisexual). These are all excellent things! I want these messages to be heavily represented in the world! I just don't want to spend quite so much time with them. I am old, and there are fewer eyeblinks ahead for me than for the proper audience.

That audience, judging from the Kindle highlights I've seen, is eagerly absorbing the author's ideas. Literally everyone in the world loves this quote:

The great tragic love story of Percy and me is neither great nor truly a love story, and is tragic only for its single-sidedness. It is also not an epic monolith that has plagued me since boyhood, as might be expected. Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other’s mouth.

I myownself think it's mildly amusing, even modestly witty, but...somehow I don't ring like a bell when I read it, unlike an absurdly large four-digit number of other highlighters.

Then again, as hinted at above, I'm over sixty. This fact clearly needs to be brought to my attention more often. I don't seem to be able (or perhaps "willing" is more accurate) to retain my focus on the gargantuan gulf that separates me from the intended audience of this story.

So there was that kick in the smallclothes. Still, I got over it and got on with the read. And let me say that, in typical YA/NA fashion, the drama is dramatic and the pining is intense without ever veering into the carnally explicit. This was a, well, it was...good, I guess.

I say that, as a card-carrying smutmonger, because the fact is I'm uncomfortable with the hypersexualization of Western (not solely US) culture. (I reviewed THE PORNIFICATION OF AMERICA, so this isn't the first time I'm saying this.) This pining and longing and simply being too scared to make a move has the wonderful, true-to-real-life benefit of giving Author Lee a chance to unleash some of the best lines she's got:

A small shift in the gravity between us and suddenly all my stars are out of alignment, planets knocked from their orbits, and I’m left stumbling, without map or heading, through the bewildering territory of being in love with your best friend.
–and–
Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn’t take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.

These are wonderful, funny, and true things for the intended audience to hear. Yay!

Author Lee's cute call-outs to her tribe are welcome lighteners of mood at different moments. She deploys the snark in small, concentrated, and beautifully timed doses:

“Poetry is the most embarrassing art form. I can sort of understand why all the poets off themselves.”
–and–
God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends.

Heh. I resemble those remarks. So will the younger readers, and their sense of being in on the joke will no doubt give them the same warm glow it does me.

The specific thing that powered me, older and less eager, to continue my grim trudge to page 501, was the fact that Author Lee never once made me roll my eyes by using anachronistic language, or attributing anachronistic concepts such as I've shorthanded above, with her eigtheenth-century characters. No one says "gay" or "bisexual," though the labels fit; they didn't exist then, and the distinction between hetero- and homosexual identities had yet to be formulated. Sodomy is an act; any man or woman can commit it; and thus Author Lee puts period-apporpriate language of description instead of identity in her folks' mouths:

When you are a lad who enjoys getting other lads in bed, you have to develop a rather fastidious sense for who plays the same instrument or there’s a chance you’ll find yourself at the business end of a hangman’s knot.

What is universal and constant is the way being in love impacts a person's ability to think and function, their perception of self, of the belovèd, of the world:

“You’re hopeless,” he says, and it is so strange and horrible and utterly lovely how the way that he’s looking at me makes me want to both back away and throw myself upon him. It hurts like a sudden light striking your eyes in the dead of night.
–and–
It is remarkable how much courage it takes to kiss someone, even when you are almost certain that person would very much like to be kissed by you. Doubt will knock you from the sky every time.
–and–
We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with lacquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.

Why would I, given my praises as sung, rate the book a seemingly mingy four stars of five? Because I love the message more than I love the read. I am surely grateful to Nora for the gift, and glad of the read being done, but I won't read more in the series. It's enough to know the series continues despite my not being along for the ride. So long live this long, long read! Lovers at last, and no it's not a spoiler because it's a feature of the genre, lovers and friends and eager explorers of the entire beautiful world. That is so very worth reading.

THE QUEER PRINCIPLES OF KIT WEBB, sheer delight and big big fun from Cat Sebastian

THE QUEER PRINCIPLES OF KIT WEBB
CAT SEBASTIAN
Avon Impulse
$10.99 ebook editions, available right now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Critically acclaimed author Cat Sebastian pens a stunning historical romance about a reluctantly reformed highwayman and the aristocrat who threatens to steal his heart.

Kit Webb has left his stand-and-deliver days behind him. But dreary days at his coffee shop have begun to make him pine for the heady rush of thievery. When a handsome yet arrogant aristocrat storms into his shop, Kit quickly realizes he may be unable to deny whatever this highborn man desires.

In order to save himself and a beloved friend, Percy, Lord Holland must go against every gentlemanly behavior he holds dear to gain what he needs most: a book that once belonged to his mother, a book his father never lets out of his sight and could be Percy’s savior. More comfortable in silk-filled ballrooms than coffee shops frequented by criminals, his attempts to hire the roughly hewn highwayman, formerly known as Gladhand Jack, proves equal parts frustrating and electrifying.

Kit refuses to participate in the robbery but agrees to teach Percy how to do the deed. Percy knows he has little choice but to submit and as the lessons in thievery begin, he discovers thievery isn’t the only crime he’s desperate to commit with Kit.

But when their careful plan goes dangerously wrong and shocking revelations threaten to tear them apart, can these stolen hearts overcome the impediments in their path?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I've been able to write harsh reviews before. It should be a doddle to write a happy one, right?

Wrong...when I'm happy, where I expected to be and really almost was, ecstatic.

First and foremost, however, let me assure anyone who likes historical fiction featuring men who get it on with other men that this is a very satisfying example of the genre. Despite the W-bomb dropped at the 17% mark. (At least it was just the one.)

I was utterly delighted by the odd-couple pairing of the future Duke with the highwayman. I was even glad that the couple took a goodly time getting down to business...I'm sure the rational side of an author of M/M romantic novels knows the inflection point of first sexual contact between men is likely to be the source of a sizable, um, payoff for their readers. Knowing it's, erm, coming and being teased to wait for it can be a lot of fun!

Until the magic moment slips by...and it becomes a Thursday-night fuck.

I was 95% there by the time the deed got done, and was fairly resigned to the men having an old-fashioned "the fire flickered and died" fade-to-black coupling. That's not really Author Sebastian's métier, but people are allowed to change and try different things. Going over half the story without the act of consummation was almost too long. It was risky to use alternating PoVs in the story, given the lateness of the sex, because it really risked disinvesting the reader in the when-will-they. There was no question that they wouldn't, of course, but waiting so long to give us the reward when we weren't able to follow one character's perspective on the cost of delay resulted in a certain distancing and detachment...we had no sense of why the particular choice that was made in the final analysis was made. It felt as surprising to me as it must've felt to the men themselves. And yet we dwelt on it not at all!

Webb frequented neither church nor tavern nor anywhere even remotely interesting. Percy had become momentarily intrigued when he realized how often Webb went to the baths, but the man seemed to spend his time there actually bathing, so Percy resumed being unimpressed.
–and–
Kit was usually very good at controlling this sort of urge. Hopping into bed with attractive strangers had never appealed to him very much anyway. It always seemed like a lot of hassle {anachronism; coinage not attested until 1945} and risk for pleasure that never quite lived up to one's expectations. And that was with women; with men things were even more complicated because a heaping great dose of danger was thrown into the bargain.

And yet this monadnock of reticence chooses the loss of virginity that most men quail before! This didn't square with what I'd been told, nor was I privy to anything in the cross-talk of the book that would let me think anything other than, "do what now? where'd that even come from?!"

There are Author Sebastian's trademark delightful aperçus, of course, like this delicious pair:

“I used to think that revenge was about defending one’s honor, but it turns out that honor is just spite dressed up for Sunday.”
–and–
Percy realized he had had it all wrong when he told Kit that honor is just spite dressed up; spite was honor when it was the only weapon you had against someone more powerful.

Thesis, meet antithesis...and both are equally true. Inarguably so. Doesn't something in you resound with the truth in each of these?

Then came a serious issue I felt really didn't get anything like the time it needed to build up to: the return of the wanderer, and the foreshadowing of the real stakes in what I feel sure now is going to be a series. I can't really say more, and was encouraged to say even less (ie, nothing at all) but there's a reason I want to tell you that you're going to need to brace yourself.

In life, as we live it, there are no unmixed emotions, no purely experienced peak moments. We drag the past with us and chuck it up as a screen to avoid looking into the nothingness of the unlived future. The present is almost never enough to really distract us from the blank wall we can choose what to project onto, but more often choose to see in all its void-of-glory through a ragged curtain of life as it was.

When that happens in fiction, it's of necessity a surprise. What stakes there are, however, are utterly and totally on the line for the author. One false step, one gesture misplaced or misused, and the trust between reader and author can crumble. It almost did for me when the past came to haunt the future.

If this is the first time you're reading one of Author Sebastian's books, put it down and pick up The Turners series or the Seducing the Sedgwicks series here and here. They lack this authorial high-wire act, and building your trust in Author Sebastian's landings being solid, if not precisely the one you're expecting, is necessary not to experience disorientation.

The fact that this will be a series is worth noting as well, since there are people whose actions and inactions we need to know more about before they make full sense. And there are some actions that are, to put it mildly, aren't easy to gloss over...and I don't mean the one many will blench at.

So take this as a solid encouragement to pick up and savor the book for existing fans, with the note to set aside some established patterns; and a shove in the direction of the previous reads by Author Sebastian for new readers. For here be pleasures you should definitely not deny yourself or remain without. We need happy distractions from ugly reality...what better way than to see love conquering the many barriers folk decide to allow there to be in its free and complete exercise.