Love is patient…but desire is demanding
Percival Wood, the Marquess of Norrington, is free. His former lover Jack—a blackguard and a brute—is dead. Percival no longer needs to hide. While his father insists Percival take the opportunity to rejoin Society, Percival has other plans. He wants to get away, far away from the traumas of his past.
For years, Bertram Atherley, the Viscount Ravensburgh, had waited on the sidelines, helpless while his cousin Jack had been a cruel beast to his boyhood chum Percival. Now Jack was dead, and Bertram is eager to resume his friendship with Percival. This time, though, Bertram feels something more than mere camaraderie.
At Percival’s behest the two set off on a Grand Tour of sorts, a journey from England to Italy and France. While abroad, friendship blossoms into something more. But trauma and pain have a way of reasserting themselves no matter where one may go. For Percival, intimacy with Bertram dredges up old wounds. Yet Bertram has waited so long for a chance to woo his boyhood crush and his patience is running out.
Will the two be able to overcome inner struggles and embark on a future together in each other’s arms?
A Delicate Seduction is Book 4 in Regina Kammer’s Victorian erotic romance Harwell Heirs series. The story takes place in 1879, at the same time as Book 1, and is a male-male slow-burn, childhood friends-to-lovers, vacation abroad, historical romance. Interwoven with the romance is a story-within-a-story featuring a pirate hunter and his trusty mate. A Delicate Seduction can be read as a stand-alone; however, the novel is enhanced by first reading The Pleasure Device.
Assessment:
Plot/Idea: The author has crafted an engaging period work of love and lust against a European background. The story is evenly paced, and the author is good at building up the "will they or won't they" tension between Percival and Bertram.
Prose: The author is a skilled writer and storyteller, and thanks to the style of the prose, the work feels authentic to the period in which the story takes place. The work is book four of a series, so there is a lot of action that happens prior to this period covered in this story, and the author provides a rather dense recap to update the reader on Percival's history. While needed, the amount of information is a bit overwhelming to a new reader.
Originality: While the work delivers on romance conventions, the vivid setting and refreshing LGBTQ+ content allows the novel to brightly stand out.
Character/Execution: The author does a great job with characterization, both for Percival and for Bertram, whose thoughts and emotions are clear to the reader if not to each other.
Date Submitted: August 26, 2023
