So I somehow didn’t even realize my preorder of the paperback arrived two weeks early (!!!), meaning I’ve already read this twice by the time I got the “book release day!” email this morning.
Oops.
Except not oops, because I needed the last two weeks with this book. It’s so clever and so tender, wickedly funny and emotionally cathartic and full of dastardly-gothic-plots-with-a-twist. Everything with the first book where I was like, I need to read the second book to know how I feel about it—yep. Second book delivered and then some.
Once again it is KJ Charles at her best. And it needs the first book to be so sprawling with its cast, so lavish with its setting, because this one hones right in, a sharp, focused story that needs the sprawling, rich tapestry in the background. A contrast, a balance, that in my opinion is expertly done.
Furthermore, I hereby declare: fuck grand gestures for good. I want Pat/Pran level tears, sob-your-heart-out-and-all-I’m-gonna-do-is-hold-you emotional safety. If your romance can’t support that, is it even really a romance? Give me the intimacy and catharsis; nothing else will do.
(It’s not really a spoiler to say KJC delivers exactly that too.)
Additional notes chock full of spoilers:
I am the opposite of upset at all the Viscount Corvin treats throughout. Corvin! (Corvin, an “excellent man to be seduced by.” Corvin, his “relentless air of sexual availability.” Haaaahahaha.) Of course that’s who taught Luke what the wider, kinder world looks like. 🥹
Berengaria and Emily happening literally right under their oblivious doofus noses rivals even the magnificent Maisie/Phoebe lack of subtlety/oblivion in Sugared Game (there’s naked painting! come on)
Rufus’s reaction when he catches Luke lying and maybe cheating and stealing is everything to me, as is his eventual excitement at the truth. He’s such a scrupulously honest person, and yet his first thoughtless instincts are to, respectively, lie and bribe on Luke’s behalf, protecting him at all costs even in the midst of despair and betrayal, and then to exuberantly condone a treasure hunt. All of which in the context of things makes him more admirable, more honest. That’s how to make my heart sing.
Once upon a time I said that Jonathan: or The Struggles of Virtue is the book-within-a-book I most wanted to read: its appearance here is the next best thing, in all its kinky gothic glory 🤣
Placing the power balance in Luke’s favor, where the cocky, clever, criminal secretary has arguably (and yes, they do debate it) the upperhand on an earldom—heck yes.
Turning the surname Doomsday and its variations into endearments was honestly one of the things I felt the lack of in the first book. Like, how can you not play with that name? I see why now, and am glad KJC saved it for this book. Each little iteration of it—you blasted apocalypse, that pestilent Doomsday, my End of Days—is brilliantly felt, so perfect in its context that I wanna wallow around in it like Odo in the archives (i.e. like a pig in shit). (I’m sorry, Sir Gareth, for judging you for not doing the same.)
“You really are well named, aren’t you? An apocalypse in action.”
All the way up to:
Rufus cupped his face. “My Doomsday. The end of my world.”