Brendan Townsand is mortified when brought to a molly club by his roommate and lover. It is then that he realizes he needs to do something different with his life. Returning home to assist with his sister's season, he tries to put it all behind him but when his former lover comes begging for help dealing with a blackmailer Brendan turns to his brother's former commander, Philip Carlisle, for advice and assistance. The last thing Brendan expected when meeting Philip was that he would immediately fall in love with the upstanding older man.

This was a pretty sweet simple regency romance with the twist being that it is a gay romance. I did like the story but regrettably didn't find it nearly as engrossing as Lee Rowan's "Ransom" stories. The blackmailing/smuggling investigations really made the story for me as I tend to like books that have a little danger invested. However, both of these plots remained fairly straight forward with overly neat resolutions. It may be that I'm just used to stories with more of a twist to them. The romance in the book was a long time in coming and we do get treated to a very slow evolution of the feelings between the two men. I thought it was nice that Philip's past love was a woman he had made a happy home with. I wasn't quite sure at first if I should be amused or annoyed by the constant horse analogies, but ultimately wound up feeling more amused. Overall a descent regency romance for an alternative couple that was enjoyable if not outstanding. ( )

I don’t know if this was the final purpose of the author, or if it came out “naturally”, but I think that Tangled Web is the most “romance” of the M/M Romance in the new line by Running Press (truth, I still have to read one, but will do soon). Anyway Tangled Web fulfils plenty the promise in the description, a Regency romance. If not for the sex, I would have no problem to consider it “classical” Regency, since the setting, the characters, even the trouble in which the hero finds himself in, all resemble an old fashioned Regency plot.

Young Brendan is a prim and proper gentleman with “only” a slightly fault: he prefers the company of men to that of the young misses, and it’s not only a question of camaraderie. History student at Oxford, third son of a noble family, so with no real obligation, Brendan is in the enviable position to be able to do nothing in life. Other lesser young men would be ruined, living as rake and gambling the few money their annuities allow them, but Brendan instead is a quiet gentleman who would be happy to discretely share his townhouse apartment with a male companion. It’s not actually said, but I think that he “chose” Tony as companion since the man is not noble, son of a wealthy merchant, and so, in a way, more willing to embark in such clandestine relationship. Yes, even if Brendan is really a good and nice boy, I feel a bit of aristocracy in him, a slight aura of snobbery, snobbery that leads him to judge even himself for his own sexual preferences. And so when Tony put Brendan and himself in a very dangerous situation, Brendan has no second thoughts to abandon his scandalous behaviour and going back in the family and far from temptation.

But obviously the danger follows him, and Tony is soon begging help to avoid the right consequences of his act. Again Brendan proves to be a proper gentleman, and even if he doesn’t “confess” his sin, he asks advice to his elder brother, the heir, who promptly directs the brother to a fellow officer, Major Philip Carlisle. An handsome widower, and a clever mind, Philip not only helps Brendan but becomes also the new object of desire for the young man, who this time, has probably chosen better, since Philip is even more prim and proper than Brendan himself. If the two will have the chance of having a “special” relationship, for sure there will be no leak of undesirable and dangerous proofs.

There are two “adventure” subplots, the possible scandal for Brendan, and a smuggler problem for Philip, but neither one of them is real a so impeding danger to distract the reader to the real story, that is a quite realistic and possible evolution of a clandestine homosexual relationship in Regency London. Not the usual plot of having one of the lovers so high in the social status to be “above” of the law, not even the one of hiding the relationship behind a fake marriage, but simply the easiest of the solution, discretion. A solution that, in that time, was the panacea for all trouble, everything could be hidden behind a “discrete” veil. Nor Brendan or Philip have obligation and no one will question if they will not marry, a marriage was not a thing of love, it was a contract, and none of them two is bond to that type of contract.

I like very much as the author builds the two main characters, so perfectly gentlemen. They are not cowards or weak; they simply have a noble upbringing and value that above anything else. They are not even damsel in distress, it’s true that Brendan prefers men, but that does not make him a woman; a little example: when his sister asks him an opinion on his fiancé, a man that Brendan himself finds attractive, he says that he was the “finest bat at cricket” in college, and when his sister lament that she “fails to see what difference that makes in his potential as a husband”, Brendan thinks that “he could have given no higher praise”. Brendan is not a woman in the body of a man; Brendan is 100% a man, with the mind of a man.

Brendan is maybe a little more developed than Philip, but also the older man is a fine example of gentleman. It seems that other than sexual desire, also the love for horses commons the two men, and I don’t know, I have the feeling that the older man sees in Brendan the chance to have a companion for the rest of his life, a companion that his simpler to deal than most of the women. I don’t think that Philip would even consider marrying again, but Brendan is a very good solution.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that this book lacks of romance, remember what I said at the beginning, this is probably one of the finest Regency romance I read lately, it’s only that the author perfectly describes how two Regency gentlemen should be, and they are like that, prim and proper. An appropriateness that they are able to forget when they are behind the safe door of a bedroom.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0762436840/?tag=elimyrevandra-20