I have a few auto-buy (auto-preorder) authors, but KJ Charles is the only one where I drop everything to start reading the day a new book comes out. Here, that impatience is rewarded with a tender, slow-blooming romance-on-the-run between Daizell, a disgraced non-scoundrel scoundrel (he’s paying for the sins of his father), and Cassian, aka The Duke, aka Vernon Fortescue Cassian George de Vere Crosse, the fourth Duke of Severn, the Earl of Harmsford, Baron Crosse of Wotton, and Baron Vere, who’s incognito for a month to hunt down a thief and win a wager (he’s burdened with the premature inheritance of his father’s title). If you’re sensing a theme, then yes. KJC is as genius at plots as she is with names, and there’s a brilliant echo and contrast with both men, who they’re believed to be vs. who they are vs. who they wish to become, and the shadow their respective fathers cast across it all. She’s also the type of writer who can shamelessly open chapter six with the line, “There was only one bed,” but then wring the most profound emotional truths out of that tropey confection.
I loved every character (Martin! Eliza!), I loved the kink (somnophilia! And the gorgeous consent and negotiation thereof!), I loved the cameos at the end (Hart! Robin! Lady Wintour!). And now I have to live with the fact that a novel with a duke is going to crack my top 5 KJC rankings. How dare she. What’s more, I read the ebook, as the paperback doesn’t publish in the U.S. until October. Which I’ve already preordered, so I can repeat the lovely experience of it arriving again.