An Unseen Attraction

An Unseen Attraction (2017) K.J. Charles (Sins of the Cities)

Set in London 28 October, 1873

Clem Talleyfer is quite happy running a lodging house. There is quiet and order and it’s in a neighborhood where he doesn’t stand out. As a plus, he currently has Rowley Green as a lodger. As a minus, he is required to have Lugtrout as a lodger, and his drunken flouting of the rules has cost Clem other lodgers.

But when Lugtrout claims to have been burgled, Clem and Rowley are unexpectedly thrown into danger as well as each other’s company.

Clem is lovely. Between his skin color and the fact that he has trouble with noise and chaos, he is constantly underrated and treated as less than he is.

Would you like to keep looking? I’ll wait.”

That was the sort of thing people said and then it turned out they hadn’t meant that at all. Clem knew he didn’t recognise sarcasm because he had been told so, repeatedly.

Rowley is also lovely. He has an unusual occupation, and enjoys it–or most of it.

“What is it?”

“A badger presented as the messenger god Hermes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Presumably someone ate toasted cheese before bed.”

One of the things I didn’t quite pick up on the first time I read this was just how much rage there was simmering underneath both Clem and Rowley. Both have good reason to both have that rage, and to hide their rage from everyone.

He was a young man during the Regency, and that’s how he behaved. He had no time for modern namby-pamby manners; he’d raise his whip or his cane if anyone disobeyed him. You know.”

“Not really. My father got arrested when he behaved like that.”

He knew he looked like an automaton, staring blankly and answering furious shouts in a featureless voice, and he well knew it didn’t ever make anyone less angry, but it was all the defence he had against the awful spectre of violent, murderous rage.

Also, there is a mystery. Although the mystery is not solved in this book, the story arc–of the danger Clem and Rowley are in–is completed. Luckily, the rest of the series is available to jump right into.

Publisher: Loveswept
Rating: 8/10

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