Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

After adoring The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, the sequel was high on my list of anticipated reads for the rest of the year. I had to fight to keep my expectations low (don't we all have books we hype up that can never live up to the perfect versions of themselves that live in our brains?), but I shouldn't have bothered: this book is even better than I'd imagined.

I was initially unsure about Luke as a main character, but he's super interesting to follow. The reader doesn't know what his motivations are for a huge portion of the book—KJ Charles keeps those secrets from us as well as the other characters—and it works so well. We can become endeared to him while not quite knowing what he's up to; we worry about what he might be doing and why he might be doing it, but we can't help but love him, anyway, just like Rufus.

And, man, Rufus is the star of this book in every way. I knew right away that he would become one of my favorite romance heroes in anything, ever. Like Luke, he's a force to behold (albeit in a very different, less subtle way than Luke is), with so much, maybe even too much, kindness, faith, and generosity packed tight into his wary heart. He cares SO MUCH about the people around him, even the people who absolutely do not deserve it.

To that point, the main conflict is my one sticking point. I think it's really compelling; I can see both sides of it, to varying degrees, and I knew something like it was coming, just not when the other shoe would drop. I don't, however, love how easily it resolves itself—I really think we could have had another chapter, or at least another conversation, with fully open and honest communication between Luke and Rufus about the things that happened to really tie everything up nicely.

I can forgive basically all of that, though, because the rest of the book is such a genuine delight. The romance is solid, the characters are complex, there were a bunch of little sweet moments meant to pierce my own heart with a dagger (Luke's HANDWRITING, my god), and I cannot wait for it to come out so I can gush about it to everyone on the planet.