REVIEW:   INNOCENT AUCTION

by Victoria Sue

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Publication Date: December 27, 2015

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC

SYNOPSIS:

The Innocent Auction

London 1810.

Their love was a death sentence.

Deacon, Viscount Carlisle, was aware of the slums and gin-lanes of London. Just as he was aware of the underground traffic that furnished the brothels and bath houses with human innocents. He was also aware that the so-called justice system would hang the accused without much of an attempt at a defense, unless the unfortunate had deep pockets to pay for it.

He just hadn’t expected to be directly involved in any of it.

It started with a plea for help and ended with forbidden love, the love between a Viscount and a stable-boy. An impossible love and a guarantee of the hangman’s noose.

Will Deacon fight for Tom? Will he risk the death sentence and take that fight from the stately halls of his English mansion to the horrors of Newgate Prison and the slums of London?

Or will he realize that if he doesn’t, death will be a welcome end to the loneliness of the sentence he is already living?

REVIEW BY CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE MOSS

The reader starts out with Deacon, an aristocrat who is ambivalent about his attraction to men.  His cousin Beau, taking a chance as an “innocent auction where Beau is bound, is due to be raided.  Deacon manages to help his cousin escape but also rescues a young boy, Jack, by bidding on him in the auction and saving him from a likely terrible fate.  Jack is sent to live in the country on Deacon’s property, and the two don’t see each other for a few years.

It is attraction at first sight when Deacon visits his country estate.  Deacon tries to hold back, but the two are fated to be together.  The trick will be to find a way for the two men of such different classes to find a way to make it happen.

Then Deacon sees Beau again.  The profligate is in sad shape, has a venereal disease and is starving.  When Deacon hears that his cousin has been taken in a raid and is languishing in Negate Gaol he tried to res cue him.  I must say the details of the imprisonment and punishment were the most frank and unapologetic I have read, and I applaud the author for her honesty.  It was heart rending but important to be candid.