Now this is the sort of story I'm hoping for when I pick up a Cat Sebastian novel!
The central focus of this story is in many ways a version of the romance plotline from The Sound of Music. Captain Phillip Dacre has been off with his ship for two years, leaving his three children to be cared for by his sister and tutors after the death of his wife. His last letter from his sister informs him that his children have been running amok, and his plans for his summer at home in the countryside are to re-instill discipline in his household! But when he gets there, he discovers that the most recent tutor is the local vicar Benedict Sedgwick, who is wonderful at handling wild children as a result of raising himself in an even more chaotic home by his bohemian poet father. Ben is engaged to his closest childhood friend Alice out of a sense of friendship rather than passion, since she's quite ill and he feels indebted to her family, and also because his interest is in men rather than women so a marriage based on friendship seems to be the best he could ever want.
Of course, that becomes far more complicated once he meets Phillip and begins to see the caring man underneath the strict disciplinarian. There are other complications in the town caused by Ben's father and brother and Alice's family, but I honestly glazed over a fair amount of them, because the real point and draw of the story is the developing relationship between Phillip and Ben and with the three children as well. I found the story a bit tense at times because I kept being afraid that their attraction would be discovered when it shouldn't be, but it's not really a story that's interested in that kind of conflict. The resolution at the end is a bit too pat for my liking, but it's a reasonably satisfying fantasy ending of how two men could essentially share a life and three children together without raising too many eyebrows, without too many complications too easily waved away. It was definitely my favorite book by this author since The Lawrence Browne Affair.
Grade: B
The central focus of this story is in many ways a version of the romance plotline from The Sound of Music. Captain Phillip Dacre has been off with his ship for two years, leaving his three children to be cared for by his sister and tutors after the death of his wife. His last letter from his sister informs him that his children have been running amok, and his plans for his summer at home in the countryside are to re-instill discipline in his household! But when he gets there, he discovers that the most recent tutor is the local vicar Benedict Sedgwick, who is wonderful at handling wild children as a result of raising himself in an even more chaotic home by his bohemian poet father. Ben is engaged to his closest childhood friend Alice out of a sense of friendship rather than passion, since she's quite ill and he feels indebted to her family, and also because his interest is in men rather than women so a marriage based on friendship seems to be the best he could ever want.
Of course, that becomes far more complicated once he meets Phillip and begins to see the caring man underneath the strict disciplinarian. There are other complications in the town caused by Ben's father and brother and Alice's family, but I honestly glazed over a fair amount of them, because the real point and draw of the story is the developing relationship between Phillip and Ben and with the three children as well. I found the story a bit tense at times because I kept being afraid that their attraction would be discovered when it shouldn't be, but it's not really a story that's interested in that kind of conflict. The resolution at the end is a bit too pat for my liking, but it's a reasonably satisfying fantasy ending of how two men could essentially share a life and three children together without raising too many eyebrows, without too many complications too easily waved away. It was definitely my favorite book by this author since The Lawrence Browne Affair.
Grade: B
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