Customer Comments

An unexpectedly rich and satisfying sequel. K.J. Charles' website summarizes "The Sugared Game" this way: "It’s been two months since bookseller Will Darling saw Lord Arthur (Kim) and he doesn’t expect to see him again. What do a rough and ready ex-soldier and a disgraced shady aristocrat have to do with each other anyway? But when Will encounters a face from the past in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up again—as shifty, unreliable, and irresistible as ever. And before Will knows it, he’s been dragged back into Kim’s shadowy world of criminal conspiracies and underhand dealings." One needs to have read Book 1, Slippery Creatures, first. Book 2 is more detailed in terms of the story as well as the characters. I didn't take to Will Darling & Lord Arthur right away in Book 1 but found here I was actually caring for them a bit. The romance between the men is more carefully explored, the sexual interactions are still explicit while given a better context. We actually see a relationship developing between them. The two key female characters, Kim's fiancee Phoebe Stephens-Prince and Will's good friend Maisie Jones, could use some fleshing out. They're real enough but not as emotionally dimensional as the gents. I am very much looking forward to Book 3.

Broadly adventurous and terrifically sexy! KJ Charles' website describes Slippery Creatures as "A m/m romance trilogy in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction. It’s the 1920s and tensions are rising along with hemlines. Soldier-turned-bookseller Will Darling finds himself tangled up in spies and secret formulas, clubs and conspiracies, Bolsheviks, blackmail, and Bright Young Things. And dubious aristocrat Lord Arthur ‘Kim’ Secretan is right in the middle of it all: enigmatic, unreliable, and utterly irresistible." I found the story broadly adventurous and terrifically sexy. And while Slippery Creatures is a kind of romp, with the underlying humor of the noir and pulp fiction genres, the storytelling rests profoundly on Charles' solid historical accuracy. There is a sobering tone: the social and emotional impact of World War I on a generation. The story is fast, the writing crisp, the sexual interactions explicit, and the characters vivid.