 
 
From the publisher:
Will Sedgwick can’t believe that after months of searching for his oldest friend, Martin Easterbrook is found hiding in an attic like a gothic nightmare. Intent on nursing Martin back to health, Will kindly kidnaps him and takes him to the countryside to recover, well away from the world.
Martin doesn’t much care where he is or even how he got there. He’s much more concerned that the man he’s loved his entire life is currently waiting on him hand and foot, feeding him soup and making him tea. Martin knows he’s a lost cause, one he doesn’t want Will to waste his life on.
As a lifetime of love transforms into a tender passion both men always desired but neither expected, can they envision a life free from the restrictions of the past, a life with each other?
Review:
Will Sedgwick and Martin Easterbrook are lifelong friends. When they grow up, Will goes off to sea while Martin spends much of his time in convalescence from consumption. When Will returns, he takes up a search for Martin, whose gone missing. Will finds him living in a damp and squalid conditions which trigger a consumptive episode. To save him, Will is constrained to kidnap him and install him in an abandoned gamekeeper’s cottage to tend his fever and make him well again.
This period of recuperation gives the two friends an opportunity to get to know each other again. Here, feelings that have long lain dormant under the guise of friendship bloom, leading to one of the gentlest love stories I’ve read this year.
Will is earnest, carrying his share of trauma from his time at sea, while Martin is deliciously acerbic – his biting wit provides some of the most humorous moments in the novel. Tropes abound – one bed, friends to lovers, opposites attract – and that cocktail yields a tender, slow burn filled with so much emotion, I found my self sighing often or smiling like a big dummy as I read.
In addition, there is excellent disability rep. Martin suffers from a chronic condition and it contributes to his bracing wit and apparent lack of sentimentality (apparent because the reader soon sees that Will can unlock all the tenderest feelings in Martin). But it is refreshing to see chronic illness so realistically and well treated in a romance.
I haven’t read the previous books, so it means I certainly missed something in the way of secondary or supporting characters, but Two Rogues Make a Right worked well as a standalone.
I recently read Sebastian’s “Tommy Cabot Was Here” in the He’s Come Undone Romance Anthology and it was brilliantly written. Her wit seems to be a signature of her writing and makes me want to explore her back list. I look forward to reading more by her.
I received a copy of this book from Avon/NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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