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Common Knowledge

Birthdate: c. 1970
Gender: female
Occupations: editor
fiction writer
Organizations: Mills & Boon
Agent: Courtney Miller-Callihan (Handspun Literary)
Relationships: Stockum, Hilda van (grandchild)
Nationality: UK
Places of residence: London, England, UK
Associated Place (for map): England, UK

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1,073 reviews

bibliovermis 866 reviews

All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles

There was so, so much to like about this—the main character was an absolute cinnamon roll, the romance was excellent, really good commentary on the sources of British family money at the time, some great jokes, and lots of great gothic horror stuff. But the tonal shifts were sometimes a bit zany (mainly, switching directly to lovey-dovey, romantic, explicit sex scenes from suspenseful fear for our lives), and there were various character and scene things that I found funny that I wasn't show more quite sure I should be finding funny. Overall, a KJ Charles novel is always worth the experience. show less

Oct 8, 202519 other reviews

samnreader 1,300 reviews

A Seditious Affair: A Society of Gentlemen Novel (Society of Gentlemen Series Book 2) by KJ Charles

“Heaven preserve me from a man of principle.”

We fling about ‘favorite’ and as such it loses meaning. No judgement, no guilt even, but I have a lot of favorites. Who is my favorite band? What is my favorite season? I need some context, then perhaps I can answer.

Favorite romance is even a bit harder, and I think for a lot of good reasons

I’ve read some books this year. I have read and reread a lot of favorites. Some could easily win / intertwine/ challenge this book. The thing about show more that is, there aren’t many--maybe a handful--that I love for everything it is. Is this my favorite couple? I don’t know. I don't even know if it's my fave KJC couple. Is it my favorite hero? I don’t think so. Is it my favorite setting? Perhaps. Does it have my favorite cast of supporting characters--I think I can actually say yes to that.

This book, in the end, is about the recipe for me. I like butter, but butter is not my favorite. Salt is great, but what it really does is enhance flavors...and you get it.

Now that I’ve exposed you all to that painfully long explanation of how this book is very clearly a favorite of mine, how can I explain a book that gives me so much to say it leaves me speechless yet again? Things like “Come to bed with me, you blasted radical. Bring me your revolution.” make me melt to my very core. How, honestly, does this opposites attract-IN POLITICS-come off so uncompromising, yet promising--so beautiful, yet raw? I don’t have to know. I just know that it does. It does. Silas and Dom are two principled men from the opposite sides of the--well everything--the stakes are never low.
”I want to make you give up your principles almost as much as I should like to give up mine. I’m afraid for you every day. I want you to be safe. I want you warm and fed. I want a thousand things for you that you won’t take from me.”

“I can’t.”

“I know you can’t accept a damned thing except for the trivial matters of my heart, my soul, and my moral certainty. You’ve helped yourself to those quite freely.”

Silas and Dom can succeed because of their regard for the other and their willingness to...talk. Yep, there’s a lot of conversation...but it's really not at the expense of action.

“There is no fine gentleman for me.. I had the finest gentleman in the land once and I didn’t want him. I want my firebrand. And I want no after.”

This book has one of the best ex-subplots of all time (I challenge you to find one better!). It’s done with such precision, such care and such respect, I honestly can’t say I’ve ever encountered anything like it in fiction. The hurt and wrong from the past--Richard’s refusal of Dominic’s needs--is also based on a place of intense love. Richard and Dominic’s honest and raw conversations and continuing love for each other did the exact opposite of what novels that so prominently feature an ex-lover do, they strengthen and give life to Silas and Dominic’s love.

”Your werewolf is...devoted."

I could say more of the secondary characters, but that is one of the things that was most important and moving to me about this book.

Silas and Dom have no faux philosophical conversations. In fact, every conversation in this book is between people with deep understanding being deeply challenged in their beliefs. And the conversations are so pointed and effective, it’s easy to understand both sides.

”Everybody’s cold out there, Tory. Everybody. And if you think it’s enough for me that you make one man warm, you’ve not listened to a fucking word I’ve said.”

None of this, though, can hold a candle to the intense acts of love performed by all the “Society” characters. What’s more? This book easily has two of the best love declarations. I will not quote it. But I will reread it a lot-as I have since I first read this book.

And one of the excellent things upon reread, is you catch more...for me this time, I noticed so much more Cyprian. And what kind of valet he is…needless to say, I'll be jumping right to #3. show less

Jun 27, 202035 other reviews

ms_smartarse 719 reviews

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (The Doomsday Books, #1) by KJ Charles

Sir Gareth Inglis' newfound baronetcy in a Kentish marsh is not up to a good start. An unhappy half-sister, a smuggler family in the immediate neighbourhood, a town set on antagonising him for merely being "outmarsh", and his estranged father's mistress seemingly his only ally... was definitely not part of the protagonist's dreams for a better life.

The unexpected bout of blackmail from a scorned ex in the courtroom, much less so...

As much as my teen-aged self would get excited by the show more clichéd coup de foudre meet-cutes , my adult (hah!) self can rarely get into a romantic mood, unless she starts from the beginning. If I can't experience the mounting excitement of the relationship development, no amount of spice can entice me.

Luckily, Sir Gareth and Joss Doomsday manage to reacquaint themselves on Romney Marsh, and provide me with plenty of swoon-worthy tension and sneaky courting. For some reason I always expect this preaching undertone when faced with the author's insistence in placing all her heroes in healthy relationships, and I'm always delighted to be proven wrong. Turns out, I can have my dashing but morally grey love interest (fictional tax evasion be sexy, y'all), even without needing to sacrifice trust and open communication in the process.

As always, the underlying layer of (murder) mystery is a welcome addition, so I guess my tastes haven't completely dulled. I admit to being a bit disappointed by the lack of complete happily ever after, but I guess that's just me and my fairytale loving romance-brain at work.

Score: 4/5 stars

Despite the shaky beginnings, K.J. Charles' healthy relationship tropes have once more saved the day. show less

Jan 3, 202631 other reviews

richardderus 3,349 reviews

Subtle blood : Will Darling Adventures #3 by KJ Charles

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Will Darling is all right. His business is doing well, and so is his illicit relationship with Kim Secretan—disgraced aristocrat, ex-spy, amateur book-dealer. It’s starting to feel like he’s got his life under control.

And then a brutal murder in a gentleman’s club plunges them back into the shadow world of crime, deception, and the power of privilege. Worse, it brings them up against Kim’s noble, hostile family, and his upper-class life where show more Will can never belong.

With old and new enemies against them, and secrets on every side, Will and Kim have to fight for each other harder than ever—or be torn apart for good.

ANOTHER GIFT FROM MY YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. HE TRULY IS THE BEST.

My Review: This is how you end a series...not with a whimper, but a loud, resounding bang.

The entire world could've finished exploding and I'd've ignored it. I needed to know how this tale ended. I needed the series to live up to the start. (It did.) This is a rare enough occurrence that I wanted to mention it especially, and early in my review. If you're looking for a series to read, read this one; it's got the exciting action and the romantic tension and the period details that make a good read a superior one. Take a look at The Sugared Game's review to see how serious I am...despite the w-bomb Author Charles dropped on me, I still recommend the series. (Might not've had there been another one in this book. But there wasn't.)

In this last planned story of Will Darling and his belovèd Kim Secretan, we're treated to the strange spectacle of Kim without commitments to anything more than Will's bookshop, Will's bed, and Will himself. It's sweet, it's domestic, and it's peculiar! It also is destined to be but an interlude, as we know since the series is called "The Will Darling Adventures" not "The Will Darling Stories." As Kim's life is...unmoored...so Will's is ever more firmly anchored in Kim. Their expanded time together suits Will so completely that he can only be happy, even though...well, there's the little problem of boredom, isn't there, in the dailiness of life.

The list, as he well knew, comprised most of {his bookselling rival}’s hopes, dreams, and sexual fantasies, since he shared the deceased Lord Aveston’s love of Elizabethan and Jacobean music. Will couldn’t tell a madrigal from a macaroon, but he hadn’t got the job for his bibliographic skills. In fact, he’d spent much of his time with the Avestons simply chatting to the new viscount, a pleasantly dim young man who was far more interested in swapping war stories and rattling on about cricket than in anything that might be classed as intellectual pursuits.

Fear not...the long arm of Author Charles isn't about to leave us mired in the muck of Life as most people live it.

Will sighed. “We didn’t all go to Eton.”

“Aristocracy means ‘rule of the best’, and I can’t think of any company in which Chingford would be counted as best, including the average gaol. Yet the hereditary principle demands we grant power, authority, and vast swathes of land to a man who couldn’t run a whelk stall if you gave him a copy of How To Run A Whelk Stall with corners turned down to mark the good bits.”

–and–

Will felt a whole-body wave of refusal. It was bad enough Kim being Lord Arthur Secretan: he couldn’t become a marquess. It would be impossible. He’d vanish into a world of stately homes and impossible wealth, somewhere Will couldn’t hide and would never belong. They’d never belonged together in the first place. Everything between them had been built piece by piece over a chasm, and that bridge had proved fragile enough in the past without having to bear the crushing weight of Kim’s heritage. They wouldn’t survive this. He’d lose him. “Oh shit,” he said.

It's Kim's family, you know it's bad and going to get worse; you also know that Will's anxiety about Kim's privileged upbringing, Kim's membership in the aristocracy, and Will's unworthiness to be with such a Personage is going to hit overdrive...along with Kim's complete and utter indifference to anything except what keeps him apart from Will. Which, if he has any say whatever about it, will be nothing now, nothing to come, nothing ever.

Kim, like most members of his class, has a lot to say about what happens in the world.

And, as noted above, we're whisked from Will's inherited bookshop into Kim's ancestral manse, with Kim driving the vehicle of their love-match at the destination of not inheriting the worldly goods he so deeply detests.

“Because even if they did think we were fucking, they wouldn’t believe I was anything more than your bit of rough, would they?”

“No,” Kim said. “That’s the daily drip of insult you can expect as things are now, which is why I don’t want them to get worse. Because you are everything more, and I resent to the bottom of my soul that you should feel any other way. Wait for me; I’ll call you. Be good.”

–and–

It wasn’t just that the place was so big and so lavish and so horribly empty. It was that as they walked through room after room, decorated with trappings Will didn’t know how to appreciate, the tomblike silence of the place descended on them both. Kim’s descriptions were mannered and forced, and when he didn’t speak, it was not in the usual way they were quiet together, but in a nothing-to-say way that made an empty space between them. And how could Will talk when it felt like he was on a Cook’s Tour of a stately home, and everything he said was an advertisement of how little he belonged?

Of course, this being a situation that Cannot Be Discussed with Kim's laughingly-termed-family, and his odious brother Chingford is going to make things hard for the faggot loser traitor brother he's spent his entire life detesting, despising, and resenting, despite the fact that the aforementioned man is doing his utmost to prevent Chingford from being hanged for murder.

He's not only ungrateful and a jackanapes, he's deeply stupid. Every action he takes in the course of this story is evidence of the fact that Chingford is all that is bad and unworthy about the aristocracy. And there is not a single second at which he changes course. In some people, there is no impulse to decency. Chingford is one of those people.

But Kim, with his Will standing ever vigilant and always prepared for violence, at his shoulder, does not give up. He runs out of ideas for actions to take on Chingford's behalf; he loses his cool, abandons his self-assurance, and still...with a lot of help from Will's observational skills and his own finely honed instinct for making a lot of waffle sound portentous...comes into the very information that will allow him to rescue his clot of an elder brother and never so much as see him, or his objectionable father, again.

This being a K.J. Charles novel, you know that will not be the end of it.

Chingford, like so many thick people, snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

He led the way along, and round, and down the stairs to a corridor where they came face to face with Lord Chingford. He was wearing plus fours. Will had always thought they were the stupidest way you could wear trousers short of putting them on your head, and Lord Chingford’s appearance wasn’t changing his mind.

“Christ,” the Earl said in lieu of greeting. “Must you be underfoot all the damned time?”

“I’d prefer not to be,” Kim said. “Perhaps we could have the conversation that I came here for, and then I can remove myself from your presence.”

I can sense your despairing moan from here. You're correct: This is Chingford dodging the shield Kim is prepared and able to offer him, so he can make a much, much worse hash of things.

But that is just the icing on the cake. The rich, buttery madeira cake. The full-bodied, overloaded friutcake. The truly astounding stupidities that Chingford commits aren't for this brief review to reveal. For one thing I don't want to be shouted at about spoilers and for another, there is so very much pleasure to be had in the journey this story takes to get our men to their Happily Ever After that I want to leave it to you to explore and experience. It is...absolutely...bloody...perfect.

I can't recall too many times I've said that. I can recall that, each time I have, I've meant it.

A three-plus book story about a pair of gay men in a time and a place that doesn't like that mode of existence, that brings them together over class lines and around high-stakes spy-story threats, and brings the pair of them and their found family safely home believably (within the universe depicted) is a beautiful thing. In this story cycle, a man damaged by what he had to do to survive in the Great War's trenches meets a badly damaged aristocrat, a queer younger son with quirky (by the standards of his class) moral principles, who declines to serve in that war in any way, and from those opposite poles they fall in love. Along the way, spycraft is used to bring very, very nasty people to justice, if not always via the law. In the course of this, our main men hash out issues between themselves, issues that stem from their miserable pasts, and they discover the true joy of the tales being told: Making a Life out of what was only an existence.

Their discussions of the problems they've faced already, of the issues they can foresee, and the deep-seated terrors of Being Together in the Cold, Cruel World that any couple of any configuration must face are very real.

“A future. You know the concept? The shape you want the rest of your life to take? I want mine with you, all of it. A future, a forever. I love you.” He said it quite calmly, as if it was an established fact. “People say I love you to madness, but I love you to sanity, because loving you is the sanest thing I have ever done. You are everything to me, Will, and I cannot lose you to my miserable family and an accident of birth.”

–then–

“Stop being strong at me. You weren’t ready for that conversation, that’s all.”

“No. I wasn’t. Thanks for understanding that. I just...”

“Panicked.”

“I did not panic.”

“I don’t think the less of you for it. But you definitely panicked.”

“Sod off.”

“It’s merely an observation.”

“Sod off.”

“If it’s any consolation, I’m still more of a shambles than you.”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Will muttered. He brushed his lips over Kim’s fingers, and felt the sense of—not panic, obviously, but extreme nervous tension recede.

Real conversations. Ones I can hear myself having. Ones I have in fact had. And that's the beauty of the whole-series read, as the capstone of a series of stories wherein we've made an emotional investment in the characters: It's not life, it's better than, more organized than, and more fully fleshed than the life mere mortals can expect to lead.

Will, I think, has the best way of putting his—probably all of our—feelings into his relatable perspective.

So he’d do better. He had to: he wasn’t giving this up now. There was something in Kim that called to something in himself with a fierce urgency like the baying of hounds on the scent, and that was all that mattered. Yes, there were going to be problems and he’d have to make sure he didn’t add to them by, for example, punching any more rich people. But he’d never felt the sort of connection with another human soul that he did with Kim, and he wasn’t letting it go either by choice or by stupidity, and that was all there was to it.

That is, in fact, all there ever is to it. show less

Mar 15, 202616 other reviews

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