Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #368494 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Almost Perfect
The Price of Temptation is the debut novel of MJ Pearson, a heterosexual woman who has written several short stories.
This novel is mostly the same as other Regency romances with one important difference: The two leads are gay.
I read this because there aren't any other gay novels out there that are romances, as such. Most of what I have read is just sex, really. So, I was glad to come across a novel which was about gay romance.
Jamir Riley is a 22 year old who has come to the Earl of St Clair's townhouse to take up a tutoring position offered to him. When he arrives, he learns that the earl, his wife and children are dead and that the old earl's brother is the new Earl of St Clair. Jamie is hired on the advice of St Clair's valet, who also happens to be gay. As he starts work, Jamie discovers the odd household which is prefectly aware of the earl's sexual preferences. The Earl has a lover who is threatened by Jamie and so decides to get rid of him.
I think this book could be important in gay literature because it treats the leads as human who happen to be gay. This might be a strange thing to say about a gay romance but their homosexuality isn't allowed to define them.
I think there are two problems with this novel. The less important is that the ending was too rushed. The more important, for me, anyway, is that I would have liked the character's personalities fleshed out a little more. This could have been done through witty exchanges, as is done in traditional Regency romances.
Over all, a good book, and one that I would recommend. The author has a new Regency romance coming out in the Autumn. You can read the first chapter on her website. I have to say that I'm really looking forward to that because the first chapter is great.

Sorry, if I wrote too much. This is my first review.

Enjoyable, but historically flawed
I won't say I didn't enjoy this, because I did. It was possible to unhinge my research head and treat it as a "romance novel" with all that that genre implies. Brooding hero, delicate (but rather stubborn) hero who isn't going to let said BH get into his pants unless it's true love - not if he can help it! (all whilst being swept along by his own desires)

So yes, it's an enjoyable romance read. I liked the characters in the main. The BH (Stephen) was suitably brooding and sufficiently dissolute to make me happy. His kept man (Julian) was nicely venal without being a cardboard cut out and the hero (Jamie) was all right, although far the weaker of the main characters in my opinion.

Characters

I liked Stephen a lot. He was a product of his time and circumstances. He'd lost his family and was drifting further and further into dissipation and was more than ripe for True Love to Redeem Him. As much as I liked him he certainly deserved The Wet Fish Clue Slap around half way through, because he wouldn't shake off the wastrel Julian he was hanging around with for the lack of anything better), he struck me as a very true man - being led around by flattery and his libido - and like a lot of rich men, he had lost the ability to tell whether affection was real or bought.

Jamie I never quite connected with, he held many of the attributes of the good romantic hero(ine), he was Good. He was self taught, (no education other than some old vicar in Yorkshire, but he could read Greek and was a published historian) He stepped into the running of great house and went from personal secretary to librarian to house steward, taking over Stephen's budget and starting him on the road to solvency with a speed (the book encompasses about 3 months) and an ease that would have impressed even A Woman of Substance. But he didn't impress me, I was a little bored with him - I never quite felt I knew him, perhaps it was his lack of flaws. He just started to get interesting towards the very end of the book, and I would have liked to have seen a bit more of that.

But overall, he was just a bit too passive for my liking, I have to admit.

There are many other secondary characters, which make for lively interaction. My favourite was Stephen's Aunt Matilda.

Period Feel

It owed a healthy nod more to Heyer than to Austen, which was more obvious to me, (and to be honest I wouldn't have been able to stomach), if I had not been reading my first Heyer at the same time as I was reading this, and therefore understood more clearly where the jargon came from.

The thing that jarred me is that really, the characters seemed to me to be modern day characters in a period setting. Their language vacillated from Heyerisms to Modern Day - "Jesus!" and "f*ck" are used as swear words, and someone says that they've "blown it" - another says he "needs to get laid" at one point, Jamie has a cute nose, and so on.

The household is so liberal it's unrealistic - Stephen is not just casual or fraternising with his staff, he treats them as his equals, near enough, from the scullery maid upwards. (He's an EARL) They all give him advice and he sits and chats and plays cards with them. I also couldn't manage to believe that, in a society where buggery and sodomy was punishable with such regularity and fanaticism, that Stephen would get away with being a self proclaimed sodomite in 1816. Granted, being rich and influential, he might have been able to side step any conviction, but he would have been prey to blackmailers, scandal mongers and certainly ostracised from all polite society. He'd get away with it once, but not in a serial fashion in the way he does. Not without some other prop to sustain him - a great wit, a playwright, a bosom friend to Prinny, a huge and powerful family or something like that.

I did notice other small anachronisms and some sayings that are (as far as my research goes) only attributable to Heyer - but I only noticed them because of months of research into the same period so they won't spoil the book for the general reader, and it will enhance the enjoyment for the Heyer-philes as they will find it familiar. There were however, some nice true details - the fact that the Elgin Marbles were in the British Museum in 1816, waiting for the Duveen Gallery to be built, good solid research into where Hanover Square is in relation to other streets in London.

However, as I say, it's a decent enough read, although all in all I felt that it was all a little rushed and at 200 pages, it could easily have extended to 250-300 without harming the book at all, just to give us a deeper insight into the characters.

If you like m/m and you like Heyer, you'll probably like it, but the anachronisms kept the rating down.

Ignore the cover - this is a great book.
If it hadn't been for the other reviewer, I might not have bought this book. Indeed, I had heard of the author but I had seen a few remarks concerning the cover. I at once realised they are a jokey take on a type of book cover (I won't say which) that was out years ago, but not everyone has the same sense of humour as I do and I can see many women finding these off-putting. It's a shame because the art work is good, but there are too many bulges apparent to make you comfortable reading this in a public place.

Whether you like them or not, please don't let this put you off checking out this writer though. Her writing is both entertaining and absorbing, and as the other reviewer says, this is a book where the romantic interest just happens to be two guys. It's a great story of a young man who unknowingly changes the lives of those around him for the better, who is so easy to love, is it any wonder the whole household is lost without him, not just the Earl. Even when the plot thickened and I thought I could guess the end it continued to twist and turn on me. It's not riddled with explicit scenes as some of these books can be, which I found refreshing and surprising, as for all that it was still gripping. I was on the edge of my seat and couldn't read fast enough towards the end, and the few love scenes are handled with such expertise they are worth the wait. I will defintely read more by this author. This is an unexpected find.