RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 'An Unseen Attraction' by K.J. Charles
Title: An Unseen Attraction
Series: Sins of the Cities #1
Author: K.J. Charles
Published: February 21, 2017
Genre: Erotic Romance; Historical Romance
Length: 247 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; HEA; Comfort/Hurt; Family Drama; Historical; Mystery; Suspense; Disorder: Attention Deficit Disorder; CW: Light Violence and Murder
About An Unseen Attraction
Lodging-house keeper Clem Talleyfer prefers a quiet life. He’s happy with his hobbies, his work—and especially with his lodger Rowley Green, who becomes a friend over their long fireside evenings together. If only neat, precise, irresistible Mr. Green were interested in more than friendship. . . .
Rowley just wants to be left alone—at least until he meets Clem, with his odd, charming ways and his glorious eyes. Two quiet men, lodging in the same house, coming to an understanding . . . it could be perfect. Then the brutally murdered corpse of another lodger is dumped on their doorstep and their peaceful life is shattered.
Now Clem and Rowley find themselves caught up in a mystery, threatened on all sides by violent men, with a deadly London fog closing in on them. If they’re to see their way through, the pair must learn to share their secrets—and their hearts.
4 HEART READ
REVIEW:
In An Unseen Attraction (the first book in her Sins of the Cities series), K.J. Charles honors Dickens and Robert Browning, with a nod to Arthur Connan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Just as she melds these disparate writers and genres, she adroitly creates a tale as romantic as it is fetidly suspenseful. “It was going to be a foggy winter: the smoke from the factories and firesides formed a thick, stinging haze in the air, and once the cold weather closed in and the mist rolled off the river, the atmosphere would curdle.”
The Autumn yellow murk of England’s industrial revolution brings betrayal and murder to a quirky pair, whose personalities could only “fit” one another.
If half-Indian Clem Talleyfer’s wealthy half-brother, Edmund, hadn’t set him up as a Boardinghouse keeper, Clem might have starved. Clem suffers from a cognitive disorder which leaves him disorganized and clumsy. “Clem…finished closing up the house, starting the list from the beginning again to be sure. Better to take a little longer and be sure than to fail in his duties.” The house suits Clem, whose peaceful compassion keeps his artisan lodgers cheery.
Rowley Green, the taxidermist in the shop next door, is a boarder. Despite his violent career, gutting animal corpses, he turns them into flights of fancy, often literally when they are birds, “determined to play my standard against decay.”
Clem is the rare man who appreciates Rowley’s artistry, quoting Browning. “I pluck the rose…and love it more than the tongue can speak-Then the good minute goes.”
Raised with an alcoholic father’s violent rages, Rowley’s survival depended upon passivity in the face of aggression. He longs to turn this pliancy into love. Aware he’s “scrawny, bespectacled, unremarkable…not a charming man,” Rowley sees how handsome, gentle Clem thrives alongside his reserve. Each man “spent his life carefully not looking into an abyss of rage like the pit of hellfire he’d so often been told awaited pagans, because if he ever really looked, he feared he might be angry forever.”
Clem cherishes how methodical, patient Rowley regards him as an equal. “The way Mr. Green offered help, didn’t ignore; didn’t insist; simply offered, and (he) would go away if he was told no…. Mr. Green never laughed at mistakes, or demanded attention while Clem was going about his business, or stared.”
Clem’s tenure at the lodging house, is predicated on Edmund’s stipulation; lushaholic Reverend Lugtrout must remain a tenant, no matter how disgraceful the Parson’s behavior. Around the time Lugtrout is found dead at their doorstep, Rowley is attacked. Then his shop is targeted for arson. In order to protect their interests, he and Clem are forced to determine whether the attacks are related.
Clem, a loyal and honorable man, finds himself in an untenable position. Does he respect Edmund’s wishes, or protect Rowley, who he has begun to love?
And oh, can these men love. Charles writes the way she characterizes Rowley. “If you’re going to do anything at all, do it with due care and attention.”
She constructs focused, innovative sex scenes to suit their temperaments.
K.J. does something I thought impossible, allowing me to adore a slow-paced book. The tempo draws out the suspense. She signals upcoming danger, letting thrills seep in like fog. Readers are left as conflicted as her unique, sweet characters. We require this gradual build-up, to consider what we would do in their circumstances.
Then there’s K.J.’s humor. “Sweetheart, with eyes like that, you can spill my drink whenever you like, Gregory had said on his first evening there, when Clem had bumped the gin from his hand, and ended up sucking Clem off in the back room, which rather proved his point.”
And of course, with K.J., we expect astute commentary. “There are no degrees with life. You are or you’re not, and once it’s gone it doesn’t return.” “Most people think that nobody should make a fuss until it’s their own comfort at stake, at which point they will bring the roof down shrieking about it.”
For a touchingly familiar, yet novel novel, one reminiscent of penny-dreadfuls of the era, sink into An Unseen Attraction, and prepare your chimney to be swept away!
A copy of An Unseen Attraction was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by Penguin Random House, at no cost and with no expectations in return. We offer our fair and honest opinion on behalf of our readers.
You might also enjoy K.J. Charles’ historical romance
About the Author
KJ Charles is a writer and freelance editor. She lives in London with her husband, two kids, an out-of-control garden and an increasingly murderous cat.
KJ writes mostly romance, gay and straight, frequently historical, and usually with some fantasy or horror in there. She specialises in editing romance, especially historical and fantasy, and also edits children’s fiction.
For more works from K.J. visit her website.
