ADRIAN’S LIBRARIAN
Hollis Shiloh
Publisher - Timeless Dreams May 21, 2013
This is one of those reliably brainless Regency romances where the impossible aristocrat meets the poor nephew of landed gentry, they form an unlikely alliance and the rest is glorious history. In this case Adrian is bored, loveless, living on his zillions and not expecting to find someone he can care for. Oliver – Ollie – is homeless, having been kicked out of the house by his uncle for indecent relations with his tutor and now being farmed out as a male prostitute by a thoroughly slimy fellow.
Adrian at first mistakes Ollie for someone with whom he has an assignation, but he instantly takes an interest in the young man. He buys him from the sleazebag, cooks up a library in chaos, and puts Ollie to work organizing the books. Ollie is very touchy about being a kept man, so Adrian plays it distantly, hiding his own growing affection for the younger fellow so as not to scare him away. This begins to backfire when Ollie starts to feel and show interest in Adrian. He almost loses the young man when Ollie threatens to quit his job and go back to his old life.
The author does a careful job dramatizing the growing interest first of Adrian and then of Ollie, leading it all to a crisis where they must fall into each other’s arms. S/He also takes the relationship beyond the falling to learning to live together in the most satisfying with the cousin coming around to fight Adrian and all making nice together.
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