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Lovers' Knot: An M/M Romance |  | Author: Donald Hardy
Publisher: Running Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $6.54
as of 9/8/2010 03:22 CDT details
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Seller: ebooksweb*
Rating:  reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0762436859
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780762436859
ASIN: 0762436859
Publication Date: December 22, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Jonathan Williams has inherited Trevaglan Farm from a distant relative. With his best friend, Alayne, in tow, Jonathan returns to the estate to take possession, meet the current staff, and generally learn what it’s like to live as the landed gentry now. He’d only been there once before, fourteen years earlier. But that was a different time, he’s a different person now, determined to put that experience out of his mind and his heart…. The locals agree that Jonathan is indeed different from the lost young man he was that long ago summer, when he arrived at the farm for a stay after his mother died. Back then the hot summer days were filled with sunshine, the nearby ocean, and a new friend, Nat. Jonathan and the farmhand had quickly grown close, Jonathan needing comfort in the wake of his grief, and Nat basking in the peace and love he didn’t have at home. But that was also a summer of rumors and strange happenings in the surrounding countryside, romantic triangles and wronged lovers. Tempers would flare like a summer lightning storm, and ebb just as quickly. By the summer’s end, one young man was dead, and another haunted for life. Now Jonathan is determined to start anew. Until he starts seeing the ghost of his former friend everywhere he looks. Until mementos of that summer idyll reappear. Until Alayne’s life is in danger. Until the town’s resident witch tells Jonathan that ghosts are real. And this one is tied to Jonathan unto death…
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| Customer Reviews:
Huzzah to Mr. Hardy September 7, 2010
Poozle
Lovers' Knot kept me enthralled from the first page to the last. As an avid reader of Victorian mysteries I commend Mr. Hardy's research for the time period and the language. His rich descriptions of the characters and their surroundings brought them to life. What a great love story. It's the first time in years that I have teared up while reading. I can't wait for his next novel!
 Dare to be True September 5, 2010
Jim Duggins, Ph.D. (Rancho Mirage, CA USA)
Donald Hardy's debut novel, "Lover's Knot," is a big story, probably big enough for two novels in two time periods. "Lover's Knot" is on one hand the story of Jonathan Williams' first love affair with a hired hand on a family farm in rural England. As an adolescent, Jonathan spends a summer on his cousin's farm where the servants, including Nat, the hired hand, all try to entertain him. As the days wear on, Jonathan begins to experience strange feelings for Nat that ultimately lead to his falling in love and disaster. Fourteen years later, Jonathan, a student, is pictured sharing a London Flat with Alayne Langsford-Knight. In this instance, both roommates experience the illicit feelings that neither knows how to admit or confess to the other.
The pivotal point in this book comes when Jonathan inherits the farm and plans a vacation there and takes along his roommate for company. On the farm, at close quarters and in unfamiliar territory, i.e., rural farming village vs. cosmopolitan London, the odd "feelings" for one another intensify. Neither one can admit the source, but each recognizes the shameful and overwhelming desires that plague them.
An added torture for Jonathan is the farm's -- now HIS farm -- reviving the nightmare of his love for Nat fourteen years previously.
Author Hardy's skill at ever-so-slowly leaking the consciousness of each man's guilty feelings creates a suspense about how they will finally resolve their hidden secrets that are tearing them apart.
In tandem with the current story of the protagonist, Jonathan, is the story of his love for Nat on his first visit to the farm. Engtangled in that, too, is hidden tragedy, suicide, nightmares, and haunting ghosts who follow him.
Much of this novel is dark and seemingly hopeless, born of denial with the fits and turns from buried fears of being found out. The tension of the plot is further advanced by servants who have their own hidden agendas and a young man on the farm who resembles the lost love of Nat's yesteryear. Author Hardy has created a tour de force of the inner psychology of closeted gay men and the damage wrought by self doubt and denial.
"Lover's Knot" is a good,big "meaty" book leaving the reader lots to think about. The dialogue is crisp and clean, the descriptions are adquate, but I personally felt that the time sequences, the flashbacks to Jonathan's early life were sometimes intrusive, got in the way of emotions aroused in the on-going story. Highly recommended for the book's thoughtfulness and intriguing plot.
AMAZING GAY NOVEL July 29, 2010
Richard D. Zumbaugh (Tampa, FL)
This is an AMAZING book - my new favorite book. Amazing plot, incredible characters and very authentic. This is a true love story without the smut.
Outstanding June 25, 2010
JD Walters (California)
When I read a book, I look for the following: interesting characters in unique situations; well-paced narrative; warm, caring relationships;and a wish that there were more pages or a sequel. This book has ALL of those elements, and more. I read 200 to 300 novels a year and this book has EVERYTHING I look for! I can't recommend it highly enough.
Lovers' Knot by Donald Hardy April 28, 2010
Elisa (Italy)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Lover's Knot is probably one of the best Gay Historical romance I have ever read, in the tradition of the classic romance, where explicit sex is an option, but sensuality and romanticism are a must.
At the beginning of the novel we meet Williams and Langsford-Knight; old college mates that after decided to share a room in London for convenience while both of them got settled in the city; and now, 9 years later, they are still together. Together like friends, obviously, they well know that anything else would be a ruin, and they don't dare; they fear so much for the well-being of each other, that no one of them has ever had the courage to speak aloud their respective feelings, and so they guess, but they actually don't know if what they bear is an unrequited love or not. Even if their friendship is lasting for almost 14 years now, their relationship has still the feeling of what you can find among college students, or convinced bachelors, and even if this story is set at the beginning of the XX century (1906), they still maintain the old fashioned way, calling themselves with their last name, and not with their first name. And here the "convenience" and custom, and maybe the need to maintain a certain distance, is quite clear, since the reader knows, and read, that Jonathan Williams, is not new to being in love with another man, and when he was young, before meeting Langsford, he was in love with Nat, a farmhand in his cousin's property where Jonathan was spending the summer before college; with Nat, Jonathan was at first name relationship, he was Jonny for Nat, and with Nat he was daring and carelessness.
For this reason, and for other little details, the reader at the beginning wondered how was possible that a love so big, and ended in a tragic way (Nat died at the end of the summer, falling of a cliff), was so easy forgotten by Williams, that, for his own words, fallen almost immediately in love with Langsford at their first meeting in college. But little by little the reader understands that there was something not said between Jonathan and Nat, the memories Jonathan has are of course not happy, but it's not the sadness to remember a lost lover; and it's also clear that what happened prevents him to be happy with Langsford.
Happiness with Langsford that indeed seems easy and reachable, they are like a well oiled couple, Langsford knowing all Williams idiosyncrasies, and Williams covering for Langsford's forgetfulness; Williams is serious and quiet, where Langsford is a friendly and charming. They are like night and day, but at the same time they are the same. When Langsford realized that Williams's inheritance of the farm in Cornwall will bring his friend far from him, he understands that it's time to speak his feelings; otherwise he will loose Williams forever. I think that, being them already a couple, in everything if not by law and in bed, Langsford would have been happy to stay like that forever; only the thought of losing Williams is pushing him to change that course, probably thinking that a bond of love would be stronger than friendship and a way to not have to renounce to the man that he is already considering his soul mate.
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