“Love is a reciprocal torture” – Marcel Proust
From the start of this forbidden romance, it’s exceedingly clear that Thomas Bennett is not as invested in Alexander Norton as Alexander is invested in Thomas. Where Alexander thrives in the glow of the all-encompassing love he feels for Thomas, the polite and well mannered Thomas, a man who is strong and confident and so sure of himself in every other way, is knocked entirely off kilter by the way his body reacts to his Sasha.
From the tightening of his posture, to the instinctive flinch from even the most innocent of public physical contact, Sasha expects that one day those immediate reactions in Thomas will fade, as Thomas grows more comfortable with the love they feel for each other. What Sasha did not, could not expect, however, is that Thomas’s heart would be so little invested in their relationship that it would be Thomas himself who would fade from Sasha’s life, as though he’d never existed at all.
Running away from England, from Sasha, as well as from his own sexuality, Thomas disappears to New York City for four years, never offering even a single word of explanation to the man who had been willing to give of himself entirely in spite of the complications of their relationship, to the man Thomas cruelly abandoned just before the Christmas of 1817, after he’d raised Sasha’s hopes then destroyed them in a single decisive move. What Thomas does discover is that an entire ocean and the passage of time are not enough distance to diminish his feelings for the nineteen-year-old boy who’d awakened the man he was meant to become.
But the Sasha that Thomas returns to England for, the Sasha that Thomas hopes to win back, no longer exists. In his place is a cold and cynical man who was left devastated when Thomas rejected and abandoned him and the gift of his love. Now, it will take everything in Thomas’s power to prove himself worthy of forgiveness and to convince Sasha that the love they felt for each other is still there burning just beneath the surface, even if it means Thomas humbling himself and accepting cruel treatment when that’s all Sasha has to offer.
Though Ava March wrote My True Love Gave to Me as part of Carina Press’ Men Under the Mistletoe holiday collection, the Christmas theme shouldn’t keep you from reading this one now, especially if you’re a fan of well written Regency romance. This story can be read as a standalone even though it’s staged in the same setting of the author’s Brook Street series, a series that I’m discovering a huge passion for, beginning with the book Thief.
Ava March draws the reader into a well written world that transports you directly into the lives of the London ton and into the lives of these men who dare to love despite the danger and the odds against them. I, for one, can’t wait to make my way into the next two books, expecting they’ll be every bit as lovely as the first two.
Buy My True Love Gave to Me HERE.