#TBRChallenge Reading: The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian

2017 TBR Reading Challenge
Book: The Lawrence Browne Affair
Author: Cat Sebastian
My Categories: m/m Historical Romance
Wendy Crutcher's Category: Something Different (outside your usual reading)

This is my first m/m story, and I'm so glad I débuted with Cat Sebastian. She gets the Regency era just right, and she does a true Beauty and the Beast story.

Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, thinks he is mad. The people in the village believe he is mad. In reality, he's merely eccentric and a brilliant inventor and researcher. He has a touch of agoraphobia and an extreme shyness with people that makes him hide away in his disgusting, crumbling manor at Penkellis at the mercy of the handful of diehard servants. In a bid to save this lord, the Reverend writes a letter to his friend in London, begging him to send Radnor a secretary.

Enter handsome thief and confidence artist posing as a secretary. When he took up the post, little did Georgie Turner realize that Penkellis and Radnor would wake up a latent conscience and sense of duty in him. Of course, being wildly attracted to the large, gorgeous earl acts as a good prod to said conscience. In London, Turner was a thief who's on the run from a colleague out for his blood. In Cornwall, Turner is a hardworking secretary with patience and good organizational skills.

I loved how sensitively, Sebastian handles the two men's characters, their growing attraction, and how they open up to each other in all their vulnerability.

With a single, menacing forefinger, Lawrence touched Turner's chest. He had meant for the gesture to be intimidating, but it felt strangely intimate. Before he knew what had happened, Turner had taken hold of Lawrence's large, calloused hands in his own fine ones. Lawrence didn't know if the man was motivated by kindness or self-defense, but he found that he was holding hands with a person for the first time since he was a child.

While Radnor is no virgin, yet his experience is limited, and in recent years, nonexistent. So he is very susceptible to Turner's advances. I felt such tenderness for Radnor as he assumes his every moment of desire for Turner is a sign of incipient madness. Turner, in turn, is the experienced one but affection and admiration had never before been part of his dealings with his partners, and he is flummoxed by what Radnor brings out in him.

These two men from such disparate backgrounds come together as such equals—I loved that about this book. Neither disdains the other for who they are, what they do, or their past. They're concerned with who they are with each other. The Lawrence Browne Affair is such a romantic tale! Not to be missed.