Sally Malcolm - The Last Kiss

When Captain Ashleigh Arthur Dalton went to war in 1914, he never expected to fall in love. Yet over three long years at the front, his dashing batman, Private West, became his reason for fighting—and his reason for living.
But Ash’s war ends in catastrophe. Gravely wounded, he’s evacuated home to his family’s country house in Highcliffe. Bereft of West, angry and alone, Ash struggles to re-join the genteel world he no longer understands.
For Harry West, an ostler from London’s East End, it was love at first sight when he met kind and complex Captain Dalton. Harry doubts their friendship can survive in the class-bound world back home, but he knows he’ll never forget his captain.
When the guns finally fall silent, Harry finds himself adrift in London. Unemployed and desperate, he swallows his pride and travels to Highcliffe in search of work and the man he loves. Under the nose of Ash’s overbearing father, the men’s intense wartime friendship deepens into a passionate, forbidden love affair.
But breaching the barriers of class and sexuality is dangerous and enemies lurk in Highcliffe’s rose-scented shadows.
After giving their all for their country, Harry and Ash face a terrible choice—defy family, society and the law to love as their hearts demand, or say goodbye forever...

Comment: I got interested in this book after, you guessed it, a positive reviews somewhere. I had no real expectations, only that it would be a hard won HEA because the protagonists would be from different classes.

Captain Ashleigh Dalton and Private Harry West have become not only friends but important to one another as the war went on and they had to rely on each other more and more. Although not everyone in their team could return alive, they did, Harry a little better than Ash. However, once the war is over, and the men who sacrificed so much, many even their lives, are back to a country that often has no way to repay them as they deserve, both Ash and Harry realize that nothing had changed in the country after all. The social classes are the same deep gap as they were and no one wants to see how men who should not be friends before, now depend on each other. Harry seeks work at Ash' estate because he needs it and because he wants to stay close to Ash, something which seems to be reciprocated. However, not everyone understands this...

This story was certainly emotional. I should say that it was also a little predictable, perhaps in a slightly more negative sense of the word than, for instance, in other similar books I've tried where social class was a thing between historical but gay characters (like in some books by KJ Charles I've tried). I was still entertained enough by the story as a whole, but it is true I wasn't, perhaps, as dazzled as I imagined I would.

The story begins while the characters are still at war. We have one or two chapters where we get to see the bond between them, the need to be professional but also a protector of those who depend on their skills and decisions. This did help to see the protagonists as good people, good human beings even though they were clearly stuck in an impossible situation. At the same time, this made me think of them as an equal pair, in which social norms should have no importance, to better clash with what happens after.

After the war, they are both home, and Ash had left before due to an injury. He didn't know Harry had survived until he shows up at his family estate and was, of course, extremely happy. By this point we had had both their POVs, in third person narrative, and unlike what had happened win the first chapters, now I could see that Ash was actually not as confident as his rank at war had made it seem, which his injury didn't help with, and that Harry was more self assured and not as...pliable, perhaps?

I can't say if I liked these dynamics and personality traits. The idea of the story is that people should not have to need to be classified socially and with a common goal (surviving the war) all men should be equal anyway in terms of how much is their life worth, but somehow I wasn't immediately drawn to these two as I thought I would when I was reading the first chapters. I can only imagine it has to do with the writing style as things progressed, because I was certainly eager to see them reach for happiness.

What I think happened is that at war they only thought about what the other might be feeling and wondered if the feelings they felt could be reciprocated - not even if they were. Now that they are back in England and society forbids the camaraderie they had, the closeness, they now need to be careful with what they want and how to express it. However, we know they both like and care deeply for one another and I kind of wanted the relationship to be more romantically drawn, for the romance moments to be added with time, if possible, but it felt to me that the author's goal was more to highlight the difficulties of why this couldn't be quick, and then the sense that something bad would happen.

Indeed, this ends up happening and I don't think it's a spoiler to say the relationship isn't seen well by some people around them and causes quite a row. I think the author also sets up things so that when a solution later on comes and makes their love a possibility - not ideal but it is what it is - we can accept that and it's not out of the box. Is it as romantic as I would have wished? Not completely, but I cannot say it was badly done.

What disappointed me the most was the actual romance, perhaps because of the protagonists' personalities or mainly for the way the romance develops, but I kind of wanted something more vibrant. I'd have liked more scenes with them longing for one another without acknowledging their own feelings for a while... perhaps this would have made it seem that the actual declarations were more heartfelt somehow or that the only obstacle wasn't only society.

All in all, this was a good story, great elements but I cannot say I was always amazed by how they were made to be pieced together. I have read other books with similar ideas too and this does color my opinion too, so perhaps Ash and Harry weren't distinctive enough for me... I can't explain well but while this wasn't bad, it wasn't brilliant either, for me.

Grade: 6/10