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The Lawrence Browne Affair
The Lawrence Browne Affair
The Lawrence Browne Affair
Audiobook7 hours

The Lawrence Browne Affair

Written by Cat Sebastian

Narrated by Gary Furlong

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

An earl hiding from his future . . .

Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, is mad. At least, that's what he and most of the village believes. A brilliant scientist, he hides himself away in his family's crumbling estate, unwilling to venture into the outside world. When an annoyingly handsome man arrives at Penkellis, claiming to be Lawrence's new secretary, his carefully planned world is turned upside down.

A swindler haunted by his past . . .

Georgie Turner has made his life pretending to be anyone but himself. A swindler and con man, he can slip into an identity faster than he can change clothes. But when his long-dead conscience resurrects and a dangerous associate is out for blood, Georgie escapes to the wilds of Cornwall. Pretending to be a secretary should be easy, but he doesn't expect that the only madness he finds is the one he has for the gorgeous earl.

Can they find forever in the wreckage of their lives?

Challenging each other at every turn, the two men soon give into the desire that threatens to overwhelm them. But with one man convinced he is at the very brink of madness and the other hiding his real identity, only true love can make this an affair to remember.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 20, 2017
ISBN9781541476974
The Lawrence Browne Affair
Author

Cat Sebastian

Cat Sebastian writes queer historical romances. Cat’s books include We Could Be So Good and the Turner series, and have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. Before writing, Cat was a lawyer and a teacher and did a variety of other jobs she liked much less than she enjoys writing happy endings for queer people. She was born in New Jersey and lived in New York and Arizona before settling down in a swampy part of the South. When she isn’t writing, she’s probably reading, having one-sided conversations with her dog, or doing the crossword puzzle.

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Reviews for The Lawrence Browne Affair

Rating: 4.279904401913876 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

209 ratings12 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I liked these two for each other. Their feelings developed nicely throughout the story, and they each brought out the better person in the other, which I appreciate. It has kind of a Beauty and the Beast feel, which is a trope I enjoy as well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent! Second book in the series is just as strong as the first, and doesn't fall into the trap of becoming formulaic. New characters, with a new situation and new romance. Lovely.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Real Rating: 4.25* of five, rounded downFirst, read this:“You have a library of hundreds—if not thousands—of books downstairs, and you let them rot.” So it was a book Turner was waving about, brandishing like a weapon. “Do you have any idea what that does to any person of sense? It’s obscene, I tell you.”–and–He ruffled feathers without even knowing he had encountered a bird.–and–He had never understood what use fine feelings were to a man who was half-starved.But now he thought he did.There just isn't a more fun way to spend a couple of hours than reading well-crafted unserious stories designed to make you smile. Georgie and Lawrence are perfectly matched opposites. A lower-class con-man must be a social creature or fail and be punished by draconian laws. No one is ever going to tell an aristocrat he's wrong and bad for being "on the spectrum" as we say in the twenty-first century. Bring the two together and let the author's wit and cleverness grease the rails and bring the narrative train to full speed.I love the way Author Cat takes very real issues, such as the social isolation of those on the spectrum, and weaves serious points into her farrago-of-nonsense stories. (I mean that in a *good* way! I need nonsense!) I am, in this case, not quite as rapturous as usual only because I felt it was anachronistic for Georgie to respond so, well, empathetically to Lawrence. It's not impossible! I do fully realize it's not as though empathy only showed its face, shyly and reluctantly, in this century. (And we could use a LOT more of it, come to that.) But it was just a little jangling bell, a thready response up that one sneaky synapse...this is a bridge too far, even in my willing suspension of disbelief that two men—and one an aristocrat!—would be left alone to do as they liked when one is clearly not "right"...fired and fired.You know what? Screw all that analytical crud. Get this book, read the series, let your mind take a vacation from the darkening edges of our social contract's shredding. Georgie Turner and Lawrence Browne deserve to live their happily-ever-after and you deserve to have it be in your brain.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved everything about this story. It didn't grip me emotionally as some of Sebastian's other works, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. Quality writing, developed characters, plausible historical background. Cat Sebastian is slowly wiggling her way into my favorite authors list.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cat Sebastian is quickly becoming one of my favorite romance authors. She is creative about making space for feminist and otherwise progressive ideas despite the historical setting, and her stories are charming and clever. This book is thoroughly enjoyable - likable, flawed heroes who take excellent care of each other. A .
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Georgie, Georgie, Georgie.

    He stole the show. Just a bit too much - I felt the romance was a little more unbalanced than I'd hope as a result. But I listened to it, and the result me really loving Georgie's voice too.

    It was a lovely book, a 3.5 simply because of that lack of balance. I just couldn't muster up quite the care of Lawrence, which is interesting, because he was a very intriguing character who just seemed to fall a bit flat for me overall.

    As for the performance, I usually just say I loved it, or it added to it, but at times this narrator (though I do think his voice is quite delicious) was a bit too 'flat' and the transitions were a bit too smooth overall because of this.

    But damn, that jewel scene. I wanted to cry.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Good romance - excellent characters, with real stories beyond their attraction for one another. That it's M/M made the sex scenes (there are a few, quite explicit) not particularly exciting to me - but the story goes on _during_ those scenes, in their actions and reactions to one another. I was thinking, early on, that in a hetero Regency the challenge to the author is to get the protagonists together, privately, without destroying her reputation; in a M/M, the challenge is to get the protagonists to admit anything, given it's actually illegal. That's skimmed over a bit here - one mention of "being hanged for sodomy". One character, as part of his low self-esteem from emotional abuse, feels that these desires are wrong and monstrous - but is easily persuaded otherwise, just a romance obstacle. An interesting story, but I doubt I'll reread; I might read the others in the series, if I came across them, but I don't think I'll seek them out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More of this, please. M/M historical romance published by a major publisher? It's about damned time. And it's well-written, though there was some seemingly anachronistic language that gave me pause. I'm just so very happy to see a major player like Avon step outside of the traditional M/F pairing. I hope that other major, mainstream publishers will do the same.

    Two questions, though:

    1. Who were the dudes on the cover? It's like the artist put the beard on the wrong one.

    2. Where are the F/F and M/F/M or any other stories than M/F in mainstream Romance? This is a good first step, but it's only a step. There is a huge spectrum of gender and sexuality that should be represented in mainstream mass market fiction—not just Romance, but Mystery and Thriller and Horror and, well, every-damn-where.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Regency-era m/m romance between a minor English aristocrat and a conman posing as his secretary for mostly non-nefarious reasons. This should have been catnip for me, but boy did I have trouble keeping my head in the story. I had to constantly check back to see whose point of view we were in, and the progression of the emotional arc felt uneven. The characters would seem to be over a particular issue and then in the next chapter act as if whatever the previous development was never happened. Blerg. There *were* some lovely scenes, and in the last third of the book when some more external plot thingummies started to happen, I was happier. I hate to drag on Cat Sebastian, as she is, to the best of my knowledge, the only person publishing m/m through one of the major mainstream romance publishers (for these purposes here, read: publishers whose books you are likely to find on the shelves in the romance section in a general interest bookstore), so hopefully this rockiness was a one-off (or was just me).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For most of this book, there is not much in the way of conflict, and it says something for it that it didn't need more. It's a rather slow paced story, one of two people without much of a place in society forming a family, as Georgie puts Radnor's house in order and encourages him to open up just a bit to the world. Every now and then a hint of an outside threat arises, but until the last few chapters, each one turns out to be surprisingly less of a threat than one thought. It's not a terribly suspenseful book, but in a way it's quite appropriate, just as Radnor adjusts some of his habits and the results turn out not to be so terrible after all.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Georgie is a thief and con man. He is sent by his brother to Cornwall to check on the mental condition of Sir Lawrence Browne after Georgie runs afoul of his criminal boss. Lawrence is an inventor as well as an Earl. He is considered mad since his father and brother were mad before their deaths. Georgie checks it out and finds that Lawrence is different but not mad. Georgie brings stability into the household.I liked these characters. They were perfectly matched. Where one was weak, the other was strong. They allow their feelings to grow for each other and realize they need what the other brings to the relationship. Even when Georgie tries to protect Lawrence, Lawrence thwarts his efforts and does the protecting. The story pulled me in from the beginning. I wanted to know what Georgie wanted to know and how he knew it when he finally figured out what was happening at Lawrence's estate.I look forward to the other books in the series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I really enjoyed Ms. Sebastian's first book set in this universe ( The Soldier's Scoundrel ) and was so happy to see that Georgie (Jack's brother) was going to get a book--I'm thrilled to say it did not disappoint! Somehow, it was an even better read than Jack and Oliver's book--and that's saying something :)Once again Ms. Sebastian gives us two characters who are absolutely delicious together, who don't at all intend to at the beginning but end up making life for the other one worlds better at the story's end. Georgie, who grew up in deplorable conditions, has been a highly effective con man for his entire life, but it's never really sat right with him and lately has been developing a conscience, which has him at odds with the crime boss he's worked for since forever. Lawrence grew up with an unstable and cruel father and brother and was told from an early age that his sexual orientation was shameful and wrong. He's isolated himself in his (literally) crumbling ancestral home, behaving like a brilliant but more than a little mad scientist. He lives in fear that he really will go mad, as his father and brother did before him, and it colors almost everything he does.Together these two were just magic. Both their friendship and their relationship was slow moving but oh so satisfying, and I loved watching Georgie sllloooowly make Lawrence's home, his very existence better and more comfortable. And then the last 20% when Lawrence returned the favor? OMG. I was completely unable to stop reading from that point to the very end, for any reason at all. So. Good. Throw in some wonderfully humorous writing and great secondary characters (Simon! Uncle Courtenay, hero of book 3!) and you have an all-around fantastic read.Rating: 4 1/2 stars / AI voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.