Publication Date: January 3, 2014
Charles and Edward by Beau Garçon De La Nuit is a modern-day pretty woman novel. Edward is a young man with a rough past making his way by his wits when he meets the British Aristocrat, Charles. Edward and Charles embark on a business relationship that takes Edward places that he’s never been. Will the ambitious Edward change? Charles and Edward is a relationship chronicled in an email format.
The author, Beau Garçon De La Nuit, gave me a copy of this novel as an advanced reader’s copy (ARC). Content may have changed before publication.
Can the story of a relationship be told through emails between a couple? Garçon De La Nuit puts forth a convincing argument that it can in Charles and Edward. Each heartfelt or teasing or frustrated or loving email peels away a layer so that we see deeper into this couple and the challenges and pitfalls they face.
Charles is an older man in the upper class of British society. He’s a book dealer and in early emails has clearly opened his personal life to Edward. Edward asks about his daughter and her business endeavors. While Edward is building a connection that could work for him in a business sense, Charles is a man drunk on his intoxicating and exotic new lover. As he tells Edward, he’s a millionaire and not a billionaire so much. He negotiates a price with his new plaything to optimize their visits and feed his addiction. At this point, his surface emails may not read as though Edward is interchangeable until reading deeper and realizing that this is a man buying a dream.
Edward’s emails convey a desire to build his business and there is perhaps a bit of curiosity about his new friend. He doesn’t answer every email, and when the suggestion is made to lower Edward’s per encounter price he seems a little offended. But Charles is entrée to a certain type of client and can Edward pass that up? He’s a little coy and distant, perhaps to keep the fish on the hook.
In Charles and Edward, Garçon De La Nuit gives us a human tale. Readers may view Edward as taking advantage of Charles but they are both, at the start, in a mutually agreeable business relationship and part of that arrangement for Charles appears to imagine a romance. He references pirates and makes sure that while he’s out on engagements and Edward waits in the room for him that Edward is comfortable. Through the email, a chronological tale unfolds of two men giving each other what they need and each appreciating the other for that service.
That the two main characters are men doesn’t matter really to the story line. These are two people practicing sex and working at and against love. What the author does highlight is an abiding distance in class in English society and complications faced when one buys and sells love. Charles and Edward reads as a wink of sorts to what people in all levels of society lack and must seek.
Charles and Edward is a fast-moving and easy read that manages to stay interesting despite being told wholly in correspondence.
If you are interested in tales of a romantic nature and in the human story, read an excerpt and buy Charles and Edward (A Modern Day Pretty Woman) by Beau Garçon De La Nuit on
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