Nikola Striker, the Lord of Fireholt, is being pressured by his parents to marry. They have settled on Wisteria Vasilver for him. The match would probably save his family from financial ruin, but Nik really doesn't want to marry, and Wisteria's looks aren't to his taste in any case. Her personality, though... After Wisteria inadvertently offends his parents, Nik finds himself thinking about her more than he expected. Her tone and facial expression are impossible to read, but her words are refreshingly direct and honest. Shockingly so, sometimes. Nik can't stop thinking about her scandalous marriage contract, which not only covers how many "marital encounters" she expects them to have, but also, intriguingly, indicates that she'd be fine with infidelity as long as all parties are kept informed and behave discreetly.

Nik has been in a secret relationship with Lord Justin Comfrey for years. He cherishes their time together, a welcome break from his duties as one of the Blessed, those who are able to use the Savior's power to help others. Even so, he and Justin don't always have a good handle on each other. Although Nik still doesn't want to marry Wisteria, he finds himself talking with her more and more freely, and wishing he could tell her his biggest secrets.

Wow, writing my own summary for this book was...not easy. Since it may not be that clear in either my summary or the author's, this is a poly romance. The story takes ages to get to that point - for a while it looks like a complicated love triangle involving Wisteria and Nik, Nik and Justin, and eventually Wisteria and Justin.

I bought this because it sounded like it would focus on character relationships rather than on how often and in how many ways the characters could have sex. When I first started reading it, I thought it was delightful. Wisteria and Nik's conversations were fun, and Wisteria's marriage contract sketched out a way for the romance to happen without anyone having to cheat on anyone else, or so I thought.

Unfortunately, this still managed to have cheating in it. Wisteria married one of the men and found out about their relationship not because her husband told her, but because she found them about to have sex (or actually in the process of having sex? I can't remember and don't care to hunt the scene down). Luckily for them, she'd been having fantasies about them having sex together and thought this discovery was hot. I guess the marriage contract didn't matter that much. They soon invited her to have a threesome with them, she was delighted to accept, and the book wrapped up in a way that left everyone happy.

On the whole, the romance in this just didn't work for me. I'd have been on board with Wisteria and Nik, or even Wisteria and Justin, although Justin didn't seem like the marrying type. Nik and Justin were, however, an absolutely awful couple. Justin frequently inadvertently hurt Nik and Nik didn't seem to be comfortable with talking to him about it. Whenever he did try to talk about it, Justin didn't understand. Justin also lost a lot of points with me after his horrible behavior towards one of the riding cats (large, talking, intelligent cats that the humans in this world hire for riding and other purposes, since there don't seem to be any horses). And his behavior right after

Nik tried to break things off with him

(spoiler show)

was an insult to both Nik and Wisteria, even though he didn't take things as far as he could have.

In the end, despite what the author clearly wanted readers to think, Justin came off looking like the guy Wisteria and Nik wanted to have around for sex. His relationship with Wisteria was a little better than his relationship with Nik, but by the time I got to the book's "happy" ending I just wanted him out of their lives, for all their sakes.

In general, A Rational Arrangement was a lot longer than it needed to be. I feel like this would have been a much better and more focused work (and maybe more obviously a poly romance, rather than a love triangle) if the author had cut out maybe 200 pages. As it was, it took ages for Wisteria and Justin to meet, and the storyline involving the little girl, Sharone, went on for so long that it started to feel like pointless filler.

I was also very unhappy with the way the book's tone drastically shifted a little over halfway through. The bulk of the book was regency-ish dances, parties, and conversations (and an occasional explicit sex scene involving Nik and Justin). Then, suddenly, there was a very graphically violent scene in which one of the three main characters was tortured - which, by the way, happened at about the same time that the other two characters went off to make out and strip each other naked. The way the aftermath was handled bugged me as well. It felt like the character's PTSD was just a plot device designed to move things forward in the proper way. Once it had accomplished what it was supposed to, it was magically done away with (literal magical healing) and never really brought up again.

Unfortunately, this wasn't nearly as good as I'd hoped it would be. If I continue on with this series, it'll be because I bought the sequel when it first came out. In my defense, it was on sale and I really did think I was going to love these characters and this world. At least the next work in the series is a collection of novellas rather than yet another badly bloated novel.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

There was never any question that I was going to buy this book. I've liked or loved just about everything of Hogarth's that I've read. I enjoyed the development of the romance in Hogarth's Her Instruments trilogy, and I still think Mindtouch could have made a fabulous asexual romance novel had the ending been different. Thief of Songs is Hogarth's first book she explicitly wrote and marketed as a romance novel, and I was excited to see what it would be like.

That said, I don't know that I'd have purchased it if I hadn't already been familiar with Hogarth's writing. “Multiple partner” romances rarely work well for me, and I was concerned that the cover only showed two of the three characters I knew would be involved. If the asexual neuter character ended up feeling like a third wheel, I was going to be depressed. I also wondered how distracting Hogarth's pronoun choices (“en” for the hermaphrodite characters, “it” for the neuter characters) would be. FYI, from here on out, I'll be using the same pronouns for the characters that were used in the book.

Dancer and Amet, the book's main characters, are basically brought together by intellectual property infringement. Dancer, the royal composer, has just gotten back from a trip to the west and has a wonderful new arrangement of a western folk song to share. Dancer mistakes Amet for a brooding admirer and is shocked when Amet calls en a thief and slaps en. The song, as it turns out, was not a folk song, but rather one of Amet's original creations. Amet broke the law and allowed his song to be played by common minstrels in taverns in order to hurt his ex-fiancee, the person for whom he had composed it. Amet realizes pretty quickly that assaulting the royal composer was a bad idea. He apologizes, and he and Dancer soon learn that they not only share a passion for music, but also a powerful attraction to each other.

One of the things I liked about this book was the world-building. I still have a ton of unanswered questions, but here's how things essentially worked. Two hundred years ago, the easterners/lowlanders benefited from having greater access to magic, an important natural resource. I don't know whether the magic resulted in the creation of the thirds (hermaphrodites) and fourths (neuters), or if the thirds and fourths were engineered to make better use of the magic. Either way, they and the magic gave the easterners greater stamina and faster healing abilities, and the westerners lost against them. In the book's present, some westerners have integrated into eastern society better than others, but patriots like Amet still exist.

Some of the relationship conflicts were directly due to Dancer being a lowland third (thirds and fourths are rare in the west) and Amet being a highland patriot. Amet had only ever been with women, and only knew a bit about eastern culture. It also didn't help that the person his fiancee left him for was an eastern third (who Amet amusingly nicknamed Obnoxious Poem).

I'd have liked this book more if Hogarth had made things harder on her characters. Nearly every source of conflict was as weak as wet tissue paper. Amet adjusted to loving a third remarkably easily. His highland patriotism was barely in evidence. Always Falling, Dancer's neuter lover, accepted Amet almost immediately upon meeting him. Although the possibility of being executed or whipped was brought up every single time someone did something that might offend the Divine (the ruler), en turned out to be extremely understanding and even-handed. Haizea, Amet's ex-fiancee, was probably Amet and Dancer's biggest hurdle, but by the time she showed up I'd lost the ability to worry about the fate of their relationship. I figured she'd be dealt with as easily as all their other problems had been.

I liked most of the characters, although Amet never quite gelled for me. The sections from his POV were a little too much like the ones from Dancer's POV, just a little less breathlessly melodramatic. He didn't always react in ways I expected. For example, I found the progression of his and Dancer's relationship to be extremely disconcerting.

Dancer was very open with Always Falling – it knew about everything, from Dancer's attraction to Amet, to Amet slapping Dancer (something it was not happy about), to Amet and Dancer suddenly kissing while working on a composition. However, Amet had no idea what, if anything, Dancer was telling Always Falling. Here was a guy whose heart was broken when his fiancee began a relationship with a third without talking to him first – I'd have expected him to make sure he wasn't doing something similar to Always Falling before ending up in bed with Dancer, but that wasn't the case. The first time Amet and Always Falling met was after Amet slept with Dancer. It didn't react as badly as Amet expected (another possible source of conflict that evaporated almost immediately), but that didn't matter. I was still left feeling that Amet was an enormous hypocrite.

Although this book was primarily about Amet and Dancer, I appreciated that, once they finally met, Amet made an effort to be on good terms with Always Falling. The ending was more HFN (Happy For Now) than HEA (Happily Ever After), because at some point Dancer would either have to give up on en's desire to have children or Amet would have to overcome his discomfort at the idea of having a child with a surrogate. However, I don't think I'd have been able to believe in even a HFN ending if Amet had ignored or been neutral towards Always Falling.

This wasn't a bad book, but I was left feeling disappointed. I think Hogarth writes better romance when she's not actively trying to write a romance novel. There were still some of the lovely scenes I'm used to seeing in her books - for example, I loved Always Falling's attempt to make a western breakfast for Amet, and the banter between Dancer, Amet, and the members of Dancer's orchestra was fun, even for a non-musician like myself. However, I think Amet and Dancer's relationship progressed too quickly. “Fast” fit Dancer better than it did Amet, and it didn't help that nearly every single thing that should have created obstacles and conflict just...didn't. Even Jahir and Vasiht'h faced more obstacles in their relationship than Amet and Dancer did.

 

Rating Note:

 

I struggled with rating this. I finally settled on 3-stars, because my overall impression of this book was more "meh" than "dislike." I still can't help but wonder if my enjoyment of some of Hogarth's other books is affecting my rating of this one.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

★★★★★Four of a Kind by Kayci Morgan

I was given this R2R in exchange for an honest review.

This is four erotica shorts, that flow together as one. F/M, M/M, F/M/M, F/M/M/M

Well this was completely unexpected, but gladly welcomed. It all starts with a girl's horrible date and rumors about her bi best friend. Could he ever be happy with just a girl, or would he get bored? Better make it an open relationship, and jealousy will be handled when we get there.
They all come from very different backgrounds. They all have different desires. Yet, they function as one, remarkably well.

Thanks to the author for this fun little poly romance.