Love Beneath the Guillotine

AHH! I've been waiting for this one for A WHILE! I've seen so many teasers and tropes, soooo many. It made me weak for these two. Here's W.H. Lockwood's "Love Beneath The Guillotine."

[""Desperate men have no morals..."

Léon Lyon: beautiful, beloved, broken. As premier executioner of Reims, he’s desired and feared in equal measure, a celebrity of the most dangerous kind, a symbol of justice and good citizenship in the explosive era of the French Revolution. But Léon has a secret. Each head he takes brings him one day closer to escape. He’s been saving every centime he’s ever earned, and any day now, he’ll leave town and rescue his little brother Émile from the same gruesome fate that has befallen him.

But all Léon’s plans are thrown into disarray when Émile is kidnapped by the dashing, dangerous, and despicable Henri De Villiers. At the mercy of a cruel and calculating (if handsome) blackmailer, Léon’s only chance to save his brother is to play the man’s wicked game.

Yet, as Léon is drawn deeper into Henri’s world, he begins to see a different side of him. Idealistic, passionate, willing to kill or die for those he loves, Henri might just be the escape Léon’s been searching for all these years.

But can Léon ever forgive Henri for what he’s done? And can either of them survive the mysterious supernatural force that seems to haunt their every move?"]

Spoiler alert, I was not prepared for how much of a hot mess both of these men were. Hot. Fucking. Messes. Add in a whole lotta gay disaster. Yeah, these two were Struggling. They made me put the book down for a while (at the same time, tearing through chapters to see what was going to happen next..and how they were going to respond to it).

Hot messes with an obsession with the hurt-comfort trope. Seriously, can we hate each other one moment and then make heart eyes the next more? Oh, I guess we can. Oof, there they go again. And again. 

And then there's the constant anxiety: is someone going to die? Are one of these beautiful and complicated and oh so adorably hot-mess-express main characters going to die on me? For a while, I didn't think it was possible; this is a fucking romance...then, I don't know, I got some "Call Me By Your Name" vibes, and I put the book down again for a while.

Of course, I learned a lot about the French Revolution (my only knowledge thus far is the one time I watched Les Mis and the many times I watched the Kristen Dunst "Marie Antoinette" movie). I kept wanting to Google "safe countries during the French Revolution" so I could predict where these two might end up for their HEA, but I didn't want to actively spoil anything.

And then I cried some more.

Trigger Warnings: executions, gore, fighting, violence, beheading, non-graphic death of animals, kidnapping, murder, discussion of abuse of a minor, blackmail, theft, vomit, consensual non-con, sexism, homophobia, slurs, gun violence, the French Revolution, and more.

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