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.