A Gentleman of Substance

More erotica than romance, with more dubcon than I was completely comfortable with, especially at the beginning. The MCs' characters were sketchily developed (I still have no idea why Michael was exiled to Virginia except that it had something to do with a duel) but their banter was enjoyable. YMMV if you like sex scenes with a bit of a plot woven in to the mix.

So this is Gay for You, and I would not have read it if I'd known that. Prior to meeting Michael, Daniel has sex with lots of women (although there are no m/f scenes in the book), and in fact he seeks out more sex when he begins feeling attracted to Michael. But once Daniel starts having sex with Michael, he decides that he will never marry a woman, because in his mind it would not be fair to her. He believes that he's tainted now, I guess - tainted by his attraction to one man, which does not make much sense. He never says he is still attracted to women or to other men.

I know that everyone's orientation is different, but this concept does not at all match my own experience of bisexuality. It also perpetuates harmful stereotypes of bisexual people. Much better writers than I have written on this topic, though, so I'll just leave it at saying that I don't like it.

I almost stopped listening early on, for that and other reasons, such as the many gendered slurs the characters use against the book's main villain, a cruel high-society type of woman. Did there need to be that much focus on how physically unattractive she is, especially to Michael, who is gay? But it isn't very long, and the narration is good. Also, the voice the narrator used for Daniel made me think of Worf, which entertained me.

Daniel's internalized homophobia continues throughout the book, but mostly, this book is a series of sex scenes strung together with a plot about having an m/m relationship in a rural community, in early-1800s Virginia. I'm not a history scholar and I don't read historical fiction to look for inaccuracies; however, one omission stood out to me as strange. The main characters don't have slaves, which makes sense in Michael's case and is explained for Daniel, but still, I think slavery would've been a part of daily life at that time. Oh well.

I didn't like this very much. It is not poorly done; it's just that those few things I mentioned made it a lot less fun for me than it probably would be for other readers. The sex scenes are good, and some of them are slightly kinky.