I've enjoyed Collette Cameron's works in the past. They're easy to read, entertaining, and total brain candy. You aren't challenged, nor do you need to think hard at all. It's like the lazy river of historical romances. However, I'm glad that this was free.
This novella was not good. There wasn't enough backstory at all to engage the reader to the MCs. What is revealed during the course of the story is hardly compelling either. You have the H who claims that he's been in love with the h for five years and that physical interactions that he's had with other women were merely releases that his body wanted. I'm sorry but that's not romantic. And then there's the h who's mad at the H, then attracted to him, feels spurned by him, wants to make him jealous, and then is desperate to marry him? Uh, what?
You also have the run of the mill misunderstandings, the spurned party wishing to make the other party jealous, and the dreaded games. You know the ones...where the MC isn't willing to make himself or herself vulnerable but instead says or does things that forces the other person to react? Like the H saying he's interested in courting someone else just to see if the h is hurt by this and therefore interested in him. Or the h pointing out that another suitor has come to call just to see if lover boy would clench his fists in jealousy. Needless to say, the games never cease to annoy me, and as short as this novella is, it manages to contain some of that. The other novella I've read by Ms. Cameron also fell short of the mark and I think I'll stick with her full length stories from now on.