I got this for free in a Riptide giveaway, and I'm glad I didn't pay for it. It's an AU Regency erotic romance where polyamoury (and gay love) is not as unthinkable as it was in our reality. So I got it hoping for some light, sexy poly fluff.
You know how a lot of the time, romance covers are stereotypical and really say nothing about the actual book? Well, this time it feels kind of apt.
Language is fairly good, but the narrative veers in and out of Regency pastiche, and from saccharine to melodrama, and I ended up more annoyed than entertained. The characters never actually talk to each other until the very end, and I found the MCs immature, especially the male MC who was also an annoying prig, considering he was raised by a female couple in aristocratic bohemian artistic circles (this is lampshaded, BTW). Yes, it's possible to be straight and monogamous despite being brought up in an unconventional family, but that's not in fact the case here -- Archie simply turns out to be a closet poly bisexual, and just sanctimonious, uptight and bigotted when it comes to sex, despite his rather liberal upbringing.
The two side characters never grow beyond their rather simplistic secondary status, which made the poly element less than satisfactory, seeing as those were actually the preexisting relationships. The conflict arises not from the characters trying to navigate their changing multi-relationship, but from lack of communication and unvoiced expectations, and the resolution consists of everyone just "coming to their senses". The attraction appears simply physical, since I can't for the life of me see what they see in each other. The characters, emotions and plot seem to be bad YA level, with the adult part consisting of the sexytimes (which were either porny or saccharine, and never really very engaging -- so it didn't really work for me as either romance or erotica).
The fairly good language and the openness to different kinds of love might have pushed this up to three stars for me, if the writing had been less inconsistent and the characters more mature and likeable, and the subject matter treated with more care.
There are some period anachronisms, but I'm pretty picky about those, so most people probably won't notice them, and I suppose this is a kind of AU, albeit not a very convincing one despite obvious ambition.