Best LGBT Historical (3° place): The Nobleman and the Spy by Bonnie Dee & Summer Devon
Bonnie Dee has an odd record, she is probably one of the last authors of heterosexual romance I read some years ago and one of the first authors of gay romance I read more or less soon after that. I still remember when I was perusing Loose Id backlist for their gay romance titles (at the time very few) and I found some novels by Bonnie Dee, one of them, a fantasy, was one of the best read in a long time. The strange coincidence is that, the collaboration with Summer Devon was still far in the future, but I also knew Summer Devon, with her other pen-name, and I had even interviewed her for my now closed romance blog: with the pen-name she uses to write heterosexual historical romances, Summer Devon was among the few authors to be translated into Italian, and she was so nice to give me an interview when one of her romances was released in Italy (and if you consider that the average of releases at the time was less than 5 per month you can understand she was really among few selected authors).
Long introduction to say that both Bonnie Dee than Summer Devon come from a long, and good, experience writing historical or fantasy romance and you can well understand that reading their today Gay Historical Romance. They are always well plotted, and well developed, with the right amount of sex to make it an “interesting” reading if you are a romantic reader, but never forgetting this is also a Gay Historical Romance, and so the heroes are not a replica in breeches of a the heroine; they can have some faults, they can like rough sex, but that doesn’t mean they are not fully men.
Like Jonathan, he has many disadvantages in comparison to Karl, Karl is noble, wealthy, with a big ego and an even bigger self-esteem, while instead I felt in Jonathan a need of a stronger hand, someone to lead him. Despite this, during their first encounter, I was almost expecting for Jonathan to take the lead, to be the dominant lover, after all he was there to protect Karl. While Jonathan was a middle class man used to work with his hands, Karl was a spoiled aristocrat. It’s a fine play of balance the one between Jonathan and Karl, but in the end, my assumption on Jonathan is correct, even if he doesn’t need protection, he is well capable of taking care of himself, he likes to have a dominant lover, in life and bed.
Karl and Jonathan likes sex, Karl maybe it’s more experienced than Jonathan, but both of them are willing to admit where their true interest lies and to take up when the chance comes. One of the point I probably liked more than everything is that, despite the fact Karl and Jonathan have a common past together which saw them fighting on opposite side of the field, they don’t let this influence their first encounter and the following relationship. That episode is something that is bonding them more than making them enemies forever.
http://www.loose-id.com/The-Nobleman-and-the-Spy.aspx
Amazon: The Nobleman and the Spy
Amazon Kindle: The Nobleman and the Spy
Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: Loose Id, LLC (September 28, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1611183669
ISBN-13: 978-1611183665
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle
Cover Art by Anne Cain