Flight into Fantasy

Title: Love Under Siege
Author: Samantha Kane
Genre: Historical Romance
Grade: A-
Reason for Reading: I fell in love with Ms. Kane’s alternate universe Regency England of happy M/M/F threesomes when I read her last book.

Synopsis: Phillip Neville and Jonathan Overton have been best friends since childhood. When
they return to England as veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, they enter the marriage
market. It doesn’t take long for them both to fall deeply in love with shy, awkward,
beautiful Maggie Trueheart. Phillip and Maggie marry, but Phillip and Jonathan do
not tell her about the menage a trois marriage the two men hope to have. When Maggie
finds out, it takes the persuasive power of both men to convince her that this threesome
was meant to be.
In the process of helping Maggie discover the sexually aggressive woman inside herself,
Phillip and Jonathan realize their love for one another is more than friendship.
Before the two men can consummate their relationship, however, a brutal attack on
Maggie and Jonathan’s self-recriminations drive the lovers apart. It will take all
the love and determination the three possess to achieve their happily ever after.

My Thoughts: Man, that synopsis pretty much gives you the whole rest of the book right there. I would make a joke that you don’t even have to read the book now, except this is Samantha Kane we’re talking about so yes, yes you do have to read the book, because it’s lovely.

What I like about the books in this series is that I felt the passionate feelings between the three characters in their various encounters. And once again, I perceived them as real people, completely different from Tony, Jason and Kate of the first book. All of them have their insecurities, and they are overcome during the course of the book.

I have to admit that there were a couple of things Ms. Kane had to sell me on. I’m not really all that into BDSM, and I was afraid after the first real sex scene that I was going to get a nonstop BDSM lovefest, but thankfully Ms. Kane chose not to go that route. In fact, every sex scene in this book was sizzling and helped to develop the characters and their relationship. Yes, even and especially the scenes between Phillip and Jonathan, and we all know what a hard sell M/M usually is for me. But in this case, like Maggie, I was anxious for those boys to get it on with each other.

Aside from the sexing, which there was a lot of in this book, the rest of the character development was, as I said, very good. I got excited to read Maggie’s book after a brief scene in Kate’s where she has a cameo, and I liked her. She’s a sweet, gentle person with a good heart and though at times I thought she was a bit of a shrew, I forgave her because she was a product of her times, and at least the characters acknowledge that maybe the rest of the ton might not approve of M/M/F triads.

Phillip was pretty cool, too. I liked that he was sensitive and gentle with Maggie, and that he was able to display his tenderness toward both her and Jonathan. He seemed very level-headed, and definitely he was the emotional support of the triad.

As for Jonathan… Oh, Jonathan. I loved him so much. He suffers from nightmares as a result of the war, and I loved the scene in which he comes to Maggie, all wild-eyed, and begs her to help him forget with the tried and true method of healing sexx0rz. I thought his self-recriminations at the end were a bit too emo for my tastes, but it all comes right in the end.

As for the other characters, we get a few scenes with Kate, Tony and Jason, and there’s some more sequel-baiting. Unlike most authors though, Kane handles the sequel baits in a way that doesn’t feel tacked on and has me wanting to know more. I’m particularly intrigued by the Duke of Ashton and his partner, Brett, and Daniel Steinberg, the Jewish dandy. I hope they will all get books of their own soon.

My quibbles were fairly minor. It took me a bit longer to get into this book than the last one, and I thought that there was still a distressing tendency to emote rather than talk at times. I’m not really all that convinced that real Regency men, even in an alternate universe, would have some of the conversations these people did, and they had a tendency to psychoanalyze each other that definitely felt a bit too modern. But at least they talked, which is more than I can say about some books.

All those things aside, I loved this book for being exactly the quick comfort read I really needed. I am definitely a Samantha Kane fangirl, and absolutely cannot wait to keep reading what she has to offer.