Band Sinister

I think I must've been in the wrong state of mind for this book, because I didn't really enjoy it. I don't know. This is the first of her books in a long time that I didn't love, so it's actually a little difficult to admit my dislike to myself, as silly as that may sound. But I wasn't enchanted.

Overall, this book includes a lot of emotionally fraught themes - family devotion, polyamory, virginity, internalized homophobia, sexual consent, living outside of societal norms, choosing to control one's own life - and in my opinion, most of those topics weren't given enough attention in the narrative. It needed more focus.

I loved Guy and wanted him to be happy, but I didn't like Philip much at all. Every other character in the book was more appealing to me. He's in the same vein as Lord Crane, who was hard for me to like at first too, but he won me over eventually because of his devotion to Stephen. That isn't the plot here, which is fine, but I didn't like the way this romance played out. Philip's primary flaw is his difficulty understanding other perspectives, which is a big flaw in a romance hero. The plot does address this problem, in the end. But to also make him unable to give all of himself to Guy seemed like an odd choice. He was still emotionally unavailable in some ways, at their happy ending.

More damningly, I can't pinpoint the moment when Philip and Guy fell in love with each other. There was a lot of introspection and talking about their relationship; those parts of the book really dragged for me, probably because I didn't like Philip. But despite all Philip's waffling, I still didn't feel like I understood his feelings.

I like reading about polyamory, and when I figured out that's what was going on, I was interested to see how everything would resolve. But I don't feel like we got a resolution. I think it would've been more emotionally satisfying for Guy to definitively say that he wanted to have sex with the others, or to see that happen. Instead, this part of the story was left up in the air.

I'm annoyed, also, at the audiobook narrator, for giving John a Caribbean accent. Here's John's introduction:

Guy had never in his life seen a dark-skinned man except in pictures [...]. This one wore breeches and a coat like any gentleman might, and was smoking a cigarillo. He pitched it away as Guy approached and said, in a voice that had nothing of exotic shores about it, “Here you go, Phil. Outraged brother. Have fun.”

Philip used his respect for consent as a weapon against Guy in their argument before storming off.

Georgette Heyer, minus the anti-Semitism, and with extra bonus gay romance! This book is a delight from start to finish (more so once you get the names of all the minor characters in order) and I hope there are plans for a sequel, because I love this lighter and less murder-y KJ Charles.

(Update 4/7/21: reread, loved it even more, pretty sure this is one of my favorite romances of any subgenre. So good.)

How much I enjoyed this book! Had it on my virtual shelf for quite a long time, maybe even a year, but I misjudged it and what I imagined this book to be had nothing to do with the actual story. There is a downside to not reading synopsis, but at the same time I got such a pleasant surprise.

Having barely read over the past few months and having read a historical book ages ago, it was a bit difficult to get used to the writing style, the unfamiliar words, but not for a second did that take away from my enjoyment. I loved the book from start to finish.

The characters are great, I loved everyone's personalities and I absolutely loved how chaotic it was at times. K.J. Charles always manages to paint such a fun world in her books and create such interesting and lovable characters. I won't go into each character and why I liked them, that's best discovered while reading the book. That being said, highly recommend it!