Review: Unfit to Print

Unfit to Print by K.J. Charles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

'Unfit to Print' is written in the same tone and with some of the same themes as Charles's Sins of the City series. If you like those books you will like this one.

Both main characters are from minority backgrounds, Gil Lawless is a half-black illegitimate child from a well-off family who was thrown to the streets when his father died. Vikram Pandey is his childhood friend who spent the last 13 years believing his friend to be dead only to find him while searching for a lost teenager. They both having been missing each other deeply wither or not they admit it.

Charles once again shows us a part of English history and society rarely addressed, that of the Indian community in London. I would have really liked to have learned more about it, but the length of the novella means that we don't get much more than a few brief bits thrown at us. Hopefully in future works Charles might go more in-depth on the subject.

We get a bit more when it comes to the Victorian pornography and sex worker scene of the time. I was a bit worried that the subjects would be treated with the sort of heavy moralizing that tends to happen when they show up in other historical romance and was pleasantly surprised at Charles's handling of them. The characters talk through their different opinions as well as their reasoning behind them without attacking each other or the workers themselves. I'm honestly still processing some of the discussions and representations so I don't really have a completely clear handle on how I feel about them yet. Maybe once I can discuss it with other readers I'll be able to express myself better on the subject.

The two men are thrown into the position of trying to figure out where they stand with each other after having been extremely close in school, seeing if they still fit together in the ways that matter, and how the new parts of themselves will work while at the same time trying to find a missing teen.

I really enjoyed reading this, finished it in about 4 hours and its given me a number of things to think about. The romance isn't as heart-twisting and dreamy sigh-inducing as the one in 'Unseen Attraction,' but I really liked all the discussion that happened to get them to their happy ending.

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