I really wanted to like this book, because I love books set in this timeline and with that “forbidden romance” aspect to it. I was sadly disappointed in this book. I couldn’t get into it at first, and I had to restart the first chapter three times because I realized I wasn’t paying attention. I think it was a combination of the narration and the romance aspect of it. The narrator when reading the descriptions did quite well, but the voices he did for the two men made me cringe. Philip constantly sounds like he’s on the last third of the breath he’s taken, like wheezing out what he says. Ben always sounds like he’s crying. Crying and wheezing during lovemaking made it awkward and difficult for me to listen to, quite frankly. Then the almost immediately “can barely stand not to touch him” descriptions of how the men were feeling as soon as they saw each other was strange and didn’t make sense.

I get what the author is trying to do: set them at odds but show that they’re attracted to each other. It just all happened so fast, and the characters who were rigid and set in their ways just completely changed by the end of the book. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not describing it well enough. I did listen to the whole thing and finished it. The side plot with the young lady was interesting. It just wasn’t a book for me.