The Gentleman Keeper edition by Summer Devon Bonnie Dee Romance eBooks
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Confronting the darkness of his past, Gerard finds the light of his future.
When an orphan bearing the unmistakable stamp of his family's features shows up at his country estate, Everett Gerard, who has successfully avoided his ancestral estate for years, must return to the Abbey. But unexpected surprises and delights await him in a place he'd loathed since a terrible incident he'd witnessed years before.
Miles Kenway is content in his role as the Abbey’s bailiff, until his even-keeled life is disrupted by the arrival of a bastard child dumped on his doorstep. Miles’s anger at Gerard’s negligence of both estate and child erupts when servant and master meet in person for the first time.
Heated arguments about the land and the orphan’s future only mask their intense and growing attraction--but giving into desire threatens to destroy the delicate balance of master and servant. Just as the wild lad has come to trust his new caretakers, his security with them is thrown into peril. Can the two men who’ve come to love the odd boy find a way to protect him and create a home?
This is a previously released title.
The Gentleman Keeper edition by Summer Devon Bonnie Dee Romance eBooks
Running his entire life from a childhood trauma, gadabout Gerard inherits the family estate, a family scandal in the form of a nine year old truant, and meets his match in the man who runs his estate, Miles. The emotional pacing of this book is really well done, including some unexpectedly positive, tearful moments, the plot is plausibly dramatic for the time period, and, as with Summer Devon's "detective" books, you'll feel personally concerned with the characters well-being. Given these strenghts, WHY IS THERE SO MUCH BAD WRITING in this book? My hunch is its the influence of coauthor Dee - I've tried reading a Dee novel, about a young man with a physical disability, I wanted to like but had to abandon because of the toe-curllingly bad dialogue, juvenile plot and writing so poor that it makes drivel a welcome relief. EVEN SO, in the end this book is worth your time; it's too bad that the warm, generous story designed by the authors doesn't get the nuanced, evocative, fresh writing it deserves.Product details
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The Gentleman Keeper edition by Summer Devon Bonnie Dee Romance eBooks Reviews
Mmes. Devon and Dee do know their way around a historical romance. I realize that the most ardent fans of this genre are less nitpicky than I am. It's not just because I'm a man, but because of my longtime love of 19th-century English novels. Read enough Trollope and Dickens and Thackeray - even George Eliot - and you develop a sense of what the right tone is; the right sense of time and place and character and language. Summer Devon and Bonnie Dee manage to pull it off, repeatedly, and for a fusspot such as I, it is a pleasure of no inconsiderable consequence.
Everett Gerard has shut himself off from the world of emotions. Not just because he's English, mind you. He hates the very memory of the old country house in which he grew up; he has never loved anyone, although he has never quite fallen into despair.
Miles Kenway has built rather a nice wall around his own emotions as well. Past unhappiness has left him restless, moving about the world, trying unsuccessfully to find someplace to quell his need to move on. Oddly enough, caring for the neglected English estate of the absent Gerard family seems to make him happy. Maybe he just enjoys resenting people who have so much and neglect it so completely.
And then Ipsial arrives at the abbey; nine years old, orphaned, totally uncivilized, and clearly a Gerard. Somehow.
The narrative that brings Everett Gerard back to face his childhood fears, and forces Miles to admit that people can change for the better, is deftly handled, with sweetness and an elegant authenticity that mostly rings true. Devon and Dee focus on the classic British concept of a cross-class connection - making me think of the most famous of these in gay lit, E.M. Forsters's "Maurice" (and of my own novel in this genre, "Desmond"). There is none of the artificial "see how accurate I am" bravado here that one sees with some historical novelists; it is low-key, emotionally strong, and every bit as satisfying as a good British novel should be.
I know the market for m/m romance, historical or otherwise, demands sex; but there is so much fine writing to this story NOT about sex, that the sex scenes, however nicely wrought, sometimes feel like too much rich icing on a cake that was good enough in the first place. I suspect I'll never buck this trope in my beloved genre, but it is worth mentioning.
THE REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT DEAR AUTHOR WHERE I RECEIVED THE BOOK AS FREE REVIEWING COPY.
Review
Dear Ms. Dee and Ms. Devon,
I always enjoy your historical romances and this book was no exception. The settings seemed believable for the time, and it always feels to me that you do your research, but what I loved the most was the burning tension between the characters from the moment they meet.
Everett Gerard is determined to never return to his ancestral home. He takes care of the people who live on the lands as best as he can from a distance, but if it were up to him, he would never see the Abbey again. Unfortunately (or fortunately) as the blurb tells you, it is not completely up to him. A boy claiming to be his son shows up at his estate, and while Miles Kenway, the Abbey's bailiff tries to take care of Ipsial as best as he can, it is clear that Everett's personal attention is required. After several letters back and forth, Everett decides that he has no choice but to visit the family estate in person. When returns, he comes back he immediately begins to clash with Miles over Miles' insistence that the Abbey needs to be repaired and Everett has no desire to do so. Very soon, however, both realize that they want each other.
I have to admit that the fast attraction between Miles and Everett puzzled me a little. It is not just the fact that it was so fast, because I thought that the authors showed clearly that initially it was lust, which changed to love later in the story. As much as I dislike Insta!Love, I am okay with Insta!Lust even in contemporaries, and in historicals I am often willing to cut the characters even more slack, because I often think that it was much harder and much more dangerous to look for somebody with whom you form a strong connection rather than just a hook up. No, my doubts were more about the attraction between these two people from different social classes. The story definitely deals with the issue, but I suppose I expected more doubts from both sides. But when I told myself that I want to suspend disbelief, it really was not that hard to do, so I guess it was believable enough.
Then there is matter of Ipsial, the nine year old who looks exactly like Everett and supposedly could be his bastard son. I was very impressed with how his character and his storyline were handled. Portraying a child in romance can be a tricky thing, but I think in this story it was done extremely well. Caring for Ipsial brought Miles and Everett closer together and allowed Everett to demonstrate how much of his childhood trauma he actually overcame. I liked that Ipsial was not cute in the conventional sense but more wild and untamed in the beginning of the story and that at the end of the story he did not become a perfect child either. Is there such a thing like perfect child in the first place?
Here is how Miles describes him to Everett in the beginning of the story
"Gerard narrowed his eyes at this but didn't speak, so Miles continued, "He steals food on a regular basis and gets into anything he can possibly get into. He's uncivilized, probably unlettered, and some days I doubt whether he' even human." Remembering who he was talking to, Miles dipped his head. "Sorry, sir. The little hellion is improving, I believe. I had been treating him as I would a horse that's been abused, and I think he's slowly coming to trust that no one here means him any harm"
I really loved how much patience these guys showed to the boy and how small changes and not so small changes in him felt believable to me by the end of the story. In fact I thought that Everett's dealings with Ipsial showed that he overcame a lot more of the trauma that he encountered as a child than he would be willing to admit. In spite of what happened between him and his father (no, it is not necessarily what you would think happened), he treated the child as he would have wanted to be treated and I really loved the strength of the character Everett showed. The blurb tells you that at some point of the story the Ipsial's real father show up, but I actually thought that it was a little anticlimactic. Opinions may differ on this one, but I never doubted that Everett would behave any differently than he did long before that point in the story came. I was happy and satisfied at the end of the book.
Running his entire life from a childhood trauma, gadabout Gerard inherits the family estate, a family scandal in the form of a nine year old truant, and meets his match in the man who runs his estate, Miles. The emotional pacing of this book is really well done, including some unexpectedly positive, tearful moments, the plot is plausibly dramatic for the time period, and, as with Summer Devon's "detective" books, you'll feel personally concerned with the characters well-being. Given these strenghts, WHY IS THERE SO MUCH BAD WRITING in this book? My hunch is its the influence of coauthor Dee - I've tried reading a Dee novel, about a young man with a physical disability, I wanted to like but had to abandon because of the toe-curllingly bad dialogue, juvenile plot and writing so poor that it makes drivel a welcome relief. EVEN SO, in the end this book is worth your time; it's too bad that the warm, generous story designed by the authors doesn't get the nuanced, evocative, fresh writing it deserves.
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