Kindred Hearts by G.S. Wiley

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This is a very nice novella, of the type you would probably expect to have read 20 years ago; it’s a love story, and there is sex, but it adopts the old fashioned rule to not follow the main characters behind the bedroom doors… we know that something happened, but we were not invited inside the room.

For me sincerely, it’s not a problem, on the contrary, I prefer all the interaction between the main characters and it’s not really important to witness to the material conclusion; it’s nice, and if well written, it’s even good, but not mandatory. More if the author has the ability to say everything is necessary, without saying too much, like in this case, it’s a perfect combination.

Another nice aspect of this story is that Alfred, third Earl Brentworth, never actually “admits”, not even with himself, that he is homosexual; being homosexual is not something he can allow himself to be, and so he has erased the concept from his mind. Alfie is a nice man, average wealthy, average noble and average handsome. He would be a suitable suitor, if not for the stammer that plagues him; and then, Alfie has an innate passion for the theatre so much that he spent 6 night out of 7 attending different representations in 6 different theatres, one for each night. The theatre is Alfie’s mistress, and the actresses are all his lovers, meaning that he courts all of them, with small gift and gentle manners; but he never once goes further with one of them.

At the beginning I didn’t understand why Alfie was so aloof with all these attractive women, not even a hint of jealousy, if not for the risk to loose one of them to a marriage outside the show business. If not for the fact that this novella is published by a LGBT publisher, I would have really wondered what the reason was behind. When Markham, a handsome naval officer enters the scene, he upsets Alfie’s world: in the end, with all his frequenting of the different theatres and different actresses, Alfie was avoiding temptation; there is no temptation there for Alfie, something he immediately finds in open air, in a public park, when he stumbles upon Markham.

Everything is against them, Markham grieves the freedom he has when he was an officer at war, far from home, Alfie is an only son, and he has to marry and produce an heir, they are not in the condition to be able to ignore society’s binding.

As for the absence of sex, also the development of the story is old fashioned, with an output that says and not says, and a possible solution that was compatible with the situation and time. In the end, Kindred Hearts is a novella that can appeal to the sophisticated reader, more interested in the rich details and characters development than in some tumble between the sheets.

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Amazon Kindle: Kindred Hearts

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