Each has to bend a little, and make efforts, to make the thing work, but it all feels more gentle and more intimate because Oliver is prepared to bend, prepared to apologise, prepared to live at Jack’s level. Oliver still balks at some of Jack’s opinions and methods, and Jack for his part has a lifetime of trauma that shapes how he sees Oliver’s thoughts and actions. Is their burgeoning relationship a heaven of perfect communication, the meeting of like minds? Nope.

It’s not his way or the highway even when he briefly thinks it might has to be, he’s still open to communication. It’s such an easy source of conflict for a romantic relationship: their morals differ so much! They’re opposed on a fundamental level!Īnd indeed, it is part of the conflict - but part of the joy of the book is in fact that Oliver considers his errors, reconsiders his position, and unbends enough to listen to Jack’s point of view.

Jack Turner is sort of a private detective, sort of an agent of poetic justice, handling messes that higher-class society folks want sweeping under the rug - an abusive husband, a case of blackmail, stolen items… He clashes with Oliver Rivington, a soldier in need of lawful stability after the war, after helping Oliver’s sister out with such a problem, and I honestly expected sparks to fly much more than they did. Tags: book reviews, books, Cat Sebastian, historical fiction, queer fic, romance It’s sort of a Beauty and the Beast story, which amused me too, and I enjoyed the way Georgie came to realise that he actually liked a lot of his marks - it’s what made him a good conman, and also a part of why he was so unhappy as a conman.

Even though it would, in fact, be all of a piece with their pasts. Okay, people didn’t quite manage to communicate properly and talk out their problems - but at least they avoided throwing away all the evidence they’d seen with their own eyes, and avoided just believing the worst of each other instantly. The easy and obvious conflict was not what happened, and the characters trusted each other and the bond they were forming, in a way that often doesn’t happen in romance novels (and presumably real life, but I don’t enjoy it there either). Once again, she surprised me with the way the plot worked out. I wasn’t a huge fan of his character from his portrayal in the first book, but I’ve thought that before with Sebastian’s books, and she made it work once we’re in close-third POV and can see Georgie’s thoughts and understand his damage. The Lawrence Browne Affair features a side character from the first book: none other than Georgie Turner, conman and thief extraordinaire. The Lawrence Browne Affair, Cat Sebastian

The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian