I was sent this book as an advance copy by the publisher via NetGalley for reviewing purposes, but all opinions are my own.
Come to me. I need you. It’s a matter of life-and-death.
Infamous poet Sherborne Clarke is a scholar, a lover—but not a father. When he finds a baby abandoned on the steps of his crumbling castle, he knows he must get her to London and an orphanage. It’s the perfect excuse to contact the one person he trusts…the man whose love he stills yearns for, and whose heart he broke years before.
Richard Ashbrook was groomed from birth to become the Earl of Portland, until Sherborne betrayed him, exposing his sexuality to the papers and forcing him into exile. But as much as he hates Sherborne, Richard has never managed to break their link or let his confusing sentiments concerning him subside. When he receives a missive implying that Sherborne’s life is at risk, he knows it is time to return home.
Richard undergoes the perilous journey from Sicily only to find the other man untouched. Furious, he agrees to transport the baby to London—whatever gets him out of Sherborne’s life once and for all. But when a snowstorm leaves them stranded, they’re forced to confront the past—and deal with the love between them that’s all too present.
★★★★.5✩
I loved this m/m second chance historical romance so much I had to reread it less than two months after reading it the first time!
The story revolves around two past lovers whose story ended abruptly sixteen years earlier with a bad case of outing, forcing Richard to exile. While Richard has kept an epistolary relationship with his cousin Beth throughout the years, the only thing connecting him to England, it only takes one letter and a few words from Sherborne to have him run back, despite believing him to be the person who ruined him.
From the start I was hooked on the writing style and how intensely character and relationship-driven this story is. I don’t believe in second chance romance in most cases, certainly not in real life and rarely in fiction, but here it was precisely that contrast between past and present that made the romance so good. I also don’t often talk about sex scenes in my reviews, but here I think especially in those scenes it was beautiful to see how both characters had matured, that what worked for them in the past didn’t necessarily work for them now, and seeing them find new ground for a relationship that they maybe hadn’t been emotionally ready for in the past. I thought that was a really good exploration of how maybe one person isn’t right for you in that moment, but they can be right for you at a different point of your life, especially when you’re queer and you have to factor that into the equation.
The snowed-in trope makes this a perfect Christmas read if you don’t mind romances that are a little bit more on the angsty side, and there’s also plenty of fluff to make up for it. I personally could have done without the added plot with the actors, it just felt a little forced just to make it more Christmas-y and to have an excuse to cite Shakespeare, which I never really care about whenever I see it in books. But I still went and reread it because the relationship and its development was just too good, so I can only recommend this wholeheartedly!
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