CBR14 Book 36: "Subtle Blood" by K.J. Charles

Page count: 290 pages

Rating: 5 stars

CBR14 Bingo: Scandal (the book features corruption, blackmail, kidnapping, and murder - not to mention gay people in the 1920s. Gasp!)

Spoiler warning! This is the third book in a trilogy. While you can absolutely read this book without the others, you will not get all the beautiful payoff from various earlier storylines that way. Also, this review will contain mild spoilers for earlier in the series. Start with Slippery Creatures. 

For the last few months, Lord Arthur "Kim" Secretan and Will Darling have actually been a couple, and nothing bad or dangerous has threatened them in any way. Kim has been helping Will get his bookshop in order, and seems to enjoy finding book treasures at estate sales, but it's clear that a part of him misses his cloak-and-dagger duties for the special service, and he still feels very guilty about how his engagement to Lady Phoebe dissolved. Obviously not because of anything romantic, but because revealing her father's crimes to the world and his subsequent death threw Phoebe's life into chaos. Off in Paris, launching Will's best friend Maisie's fashion line seems to be keeping her both happy and busy, though.

The peace was unlikely to last long, and when there's a brutal murder at Kim's former gentleman's club and it seems like Kim's older brother is the murderer, Kim feels obligated to try to clear his name. Kim would happily see his odious brute of an older brother hang, but if he dies, Kim would become his father's heir, and that's a fate so loathsome that he'd rather try to investigate and hopefully get his brother exonerated, even if it means having to spend time with his estranged brother and father. Obviously, the more time they spend among Kim's upper-class peers, the more out of place Will feels. Already insecure about their class differences, the murder investigation and its potential outcomes place a lot of strain on Kim and Will's relationship. Can they actually have a future together, when they come from such different worlds?

Obviously, in romances, there's supposed to be a HEA (happily ever after), yet because this is a trilogy, the previous two books in the series were more of a HFN (happy for now) conclusion. In this book, however, despite their increasingly challenging odds, Kim and Will actually get their happy ending. There's a lot of drama, intrigue, danger and near-death experiences before they get there though. 

Having now read the entire trilogy, I can fully admire how K.J. Charles has structured the story. In this final volume, so many of the plot strands left dangling are nicely tied off, and pretty much everything gets a satisfying conclusion eventually. Will obviously has no family left, his "family" such as it is consists of Kim and Maisie. Maisie is off in Paris becoming a famous fashion designer (but you can bet she and Lady Phoebe turn up when she hears of the difficulties Will and Kim are caught up in), but there have been ample hints about Kim's remaining family throughout the series. His younger brother obviously died on the battlefield during World War I, but his older brother Chingford is still very much alive and entirely oblivious to his privilege. In fact, he seems infuriated that anyone has dared accused him of a crime and has no intention of explaining himself or telling the truth about his connection to the dead man, making it seem even more likely that he's guilty. Kim's father is also an upper-class monster, although a smidge more sympathetic than his son and heir. It's very obvious why Kim has done his best to distance himself from them entirely. 

While there are a lot of uncertainties, at least on Will's side, about the future of their relationship, this book is also by far the most romantic of the trilogy. Will may be a bit intimidated by his feelings toward Kim, but the reverse is not the case. Kim loves Will and wants them to build a future together, which is why he needs to make sure he will never end up taking over his father's title and position. He may have been on the shifty and unreliable side earlier in the series, but in this story, he knows what he wants and he's not going to consider a life without Will. I was also very happy that while Maisie and Phoebe were off in France at the start of the book, they return and play a central part in the plot as well, as I love those ladies. If Charles wants to write a book about their future adventures, launching Maisie's career in Paris, I will happily buy and read the book.

I suspect, based on how much I loved this book, that I will enjoy the earlier book in the trilogy more as well. I've clearly been sleeping on Charles' authorship, despite having bought a bunch of them over the years. At least this means I can read more whenever I find the time. 

Judging a book by its cover: I keep getting distracted by the sideburns on the left-hand character, whom I assume is supposed to be Kim. Nice to see that the right-hand character, presumably Will, still has his trusty knife. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 21: "The Sugared Game" by K.J. Charles

Page count: 292 pages

Rating: 4 stars

 

CBR14 Bingo - Shadow (spies and all sorts of murky shenanigans throughout the story)

 

This is book two in a series, and it really doesn't work very well on its own. To start from the beginning, read Slippery Creatures first.

Will Darling has settled more comfortably into his role as a London bookseller but has seen nor heard anything from the mysterious Lord Arthur "Kim" Secretan for several months. He has done his best to forget all about the man and get on with his life, agreeing to take his dressmaker friend Maisie to a nightclub, to dance and drink and forget their troubles. At the club, Will encounters an old army mate, who now works as a waiter after returning from the war. He reveals that not everything is above board at the club, and Will's observations while he's there only confirm the impression. 

It's only after his visit that Kim suddenly appears in his bookshop again, claiming to have stayed away from Will to protect him, but now needing his help to unravel and unmask yet another dangerous conspiracy. Part of Will wants to tell the handsome aristocrat to go to the devil and take his spy plots with him, but another part is pretty thoroughly smitten with both Kim Secretan and the perilous lifestyle he leads, so of course, he agrees to help, keeping the full truth of the investigation from Maisie and Lady Phoebe (Kim's fiancee), at least until the two women find themselves inextricably threatened by sinister forces.

Will is naturally very exasperated and a bit sick of Kim's proclivity for secrecy and double-dealing, but quietly running a bookstore and being a respectable citizen who doesn't end up in fights and break into places in the dead of night is also pretty boring, so when Kim comes knocking, it doesn't take long for Will to agree to help him once more. He has a lot less patience with Kim's secrecy this time around, but once the full truth of the matters Kim has been hiding is revealed, Will can understand why the man has been keeping his card extremely close to his chest, and why he's been worried about endangering others by sharing the secret. 

In Kim's absence, Will's friendship with both Maisie and Lady Phoebe has also further developed and he's come to be very fond of both women, as well as feel deeply protective of them. He thinks it's wonderful that Phoebe wants to go into business with Maisie and give her a chance to take her eye for couture to Paris, yet also worries that interacting too much with the wealthier classes will end in disappointment for his friend. As it happens, the secrets that Kim's keeping this time around very much have a chance to ruin not only Maisie and Phoebe's business plans, but could end up with one or both of them in lethal danger. 

While I found the pacing of this second book somewhat more uneven than that of the first and, like Will, had less patience for Kim's shifty behaviour, in the final third of the book, when everything is revealed (and you understand what Kim has been forced to keep entirely secret, not able to burden anyone with the terrible knowledge he holds) and there's a thrilling race to see how things are going to turn out, I was on the edge of my seat, so to speak, and very excited to see how everything would play out. The actual ending is bittersweet but very realistic. I'm decided a little bit to read the final volume of the series, mainly because I don't want to be done with these characters just yet. However, having now remembered how much I enjoyed the story when writing this review, I suspect book 3 will be moving swiftly to the top of my TBR list. 

Judging a book by its cover: This cover doesn't have me imagining that one of the characters is in a wheelchair, so that's a step up. I like the men in profile, and I very much like the silhouettes of the women at the centre (I'm assuming they're meant to be Maisie and Lady Phoebe). The art deco details are still excellent. Mainly, I find myself annoyed by the huge sideburns on our dude to the right (Will?) Can't tell you why, I just don't like them. 

 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.  

CBR14 Book 18: "Slippery Creatures" by K.J. Charles

Page count: 264 pages

Rating: 4 stars

 

CBR14 Bingo: Snake (SPOILER: being a thoroughly disreputable sort, Kim also turns out to betray Will at least once during the story)

Will Darling has inherited his late uncle's bookshop and is grateful for the fact. After serving in World War I, most of his skills involve killing swiftly and efficiently, not really a commodity on the post-war job markets back in England. Now he just needs to get some idea of all the books actually in the shop and get on with being a bookseller. Then some very shifty people show up and demand that Will give them information, or very bad things might start happening. Will has no idea what information they want, and he certainly doesn't react well to threats.

The thuggish criminals are followed by officious men from the war office, claiming that Will is in possession of secret information and that he'd do well to pass it on to them. Even if he knew what they were talking about, Will isn't in the mood to just be ordered about - it's peacetime now, and he's done being the obedient soldier. He's puzzled by the threats and demands and sets about going through his uncle's very disordered correspondence to find some clues. He also befriends the charming and handsome Kim Secretan, who offers to help with the search for the mysterious and likely dangerous information. 

As Will and Kim grow closer, it becomes obvious that Kim is more than he seems at first, not to mention that there is a mutual attraction between them. Their search for answers uncovers secrets that could mean very real danger for tens of thousands of people, and Will is determined to keep it out of the hands of the criminals. Will's friendship with occasional benefits with Kim comes to a halt as he discovers that the attractive man has betrayed him. He wants nothing more to do with the man, but might not have a choice when he finds himself chloroformed and abducted to a remote house in the country. 

I've seen so many positive write-ups of K.J. Charles' Will Darling Adventures and this summer, I was determined to finally get through the series. Slippery Creatures is the first in a trilogy, with the working class Will Darling as one of our protagonists and the aristocratic Kim Secretan (what a great name for a man who's so full of secrets) as the second. There is a developing romance, secrets, organised crime, violent thugs, officious government agents, any number of dusty books that might hide vital information, kidnapping, loyal supporting characters and more. 

I really liked that Charles has set her books in the post World War I-era, not a time period where you find as many historical romances or mysteries. Will is rather adrift after serving on the battlefields in France for four years, and finding his feet in the new post-war world would be challenging for anyone, even if there weren't sinister thugs and government types badgering you for information you're not even sure exists, or if it does, where in the thousands of books in your store it may be hidden. It's no wonder he turns to the genial, charming, handsome and very helpful Kim, who of course has his own agenda.

I really like both Will and Kim as characters, for all that Kim is a bit of a snake. I love Maisie, Will's seamstress friend from Wales, and lady Phoebe, Kim's bubbly and incredibly friendly fiancee. This was a fast-paced and exciting book, with a very promising developing romance. There is no HEA or even really a HFN, but since this is the first of a trilogy, I wasn't really expecting it. I'm sure that all will be resolved by the end of book three.

Judging a book by its cover: I'm really sure if it's just me, but every time I look at this, even thought I know that Will is just sitting on a regular chair, my brain insists, just for a fraction of a second, as seeing it as a wheelchair. Which is a bit odd, no? I think it's because of the dagger, the metal of it makes me want to think it's a wheel. Apart from that, cracking cover design. 

 

Crossposted by Cannonball Read.