Book Review

Slippery Creatures by K.J. Charles

There are two things you need to know right up front when deciding if this book is for you.

  1. It’s the first in a trilogy, and the author has stated that the HEA won’t be happening until book three. It worked for me, but if you’re feeling the lack of satisfying emotional resolutions in your real life and need one in your fiction? Yeah, hold off on this one.
  2. The plot hinges on a weaponized disease. No one is sick or quarantined at any point, but the effects of large-scale infection are mentioned.

Still with me? Great. Let’s get into it.

Slippery Creatures is set in a bookshop. Aside from the two possible deal-breakers above, as far as I’m concerned that is Fact #1. A good chunk of the action takes place in an old, crowded building crammed full of used books. The shelves are a maze and everything smells like dust and old paper. The number ‘forty thousand books’ is thrown around a lot. Did I fall in love with the shop before we even met both protagonists? YES. Are books the real hero here? MAYBE.

(Not really. I just miss bookstores a lot, okay, you guys.)

Anyway, the book also involves some humans, I guess. Our main protagonist is Will Darling, an honorably-discharged World War One veteran. Will, like many vets, comes home to find that gratitude for his service =/= paying work. Luckily for him, not long afterward his uncle (also named Will Darling) dies and leaves him the aforementioned bookshop. Unluckily, Will Sr. also left a very troublesome secret.

This leads to a parade of unsavory characters coming to buy, steal, or extort information from the increasingly baffled and angry Will. First there’s a sneaky thug who comes in hot with threats and burglary. Then a group of condescending top brass from the War Office. Finally, there’s friendly bystander Kim Secretan, who just happens to stumble in right when Will needs an ally.

If you’re thinking that last one sounds fishy as hell, congratulations, you’re officially less naive than Will. I said, “Oh, this sweet summer child,” out loud when he started telling Kim all about his troubles.

Kim, as a character, is as slippery as the title promises. He’s got the upper-class charm and hidden skills of Peter Wimsey, but with the somewhat grey morality of James Bond. Over the course of the book, he’s many things to Will: friend and ally, draft-dodging coward, casual hookup, untrustworthy spy, rescuer, rescued. The only thing he isn’t, is honest.

If the book was only or primarily a romance, that would really bother me. Kim doesn’t treat Will all that well. He’s likable, and we catch glimpses of a tormented past that keep him at least a bit sympathetic, but as a boyfriend (or even a hookup) he’s pretty much shit. His loyalty is to his sense of honor, and everything he does is geared toward that rather than Will’s well-being. (Or his own, to be fair.)

His flaws don’t change much, either. The choices he makes at the end are partly motivated by care for Will but still mostly for his own purposes. If I were being asked to believe in a HEA for them at this point, the book would have a very different grade.

Luckily, however, neither of those ‘if’s are true. Kim has two more books to get his life together and give Will the giant grovel that he deserves, and I wouldn’t say that this book is primarily a romance. While there’s a strong romantic subplot, at heart it’s more of a thriller. Will and Kim’s relationship serves the spy story, not the other way around.

That being the case, what I need to find the story satisfying is different than it would be for a purely romantic narrative. I still want an arc and a resolution, but what needs to be resolved is the plot more than the relationship. From that perspective, the pacing was well done. The main plot (find and protect the McGuffin) wrapped up nicely while leaving enough loose ends to bring me back for book two (Will and Kim’s relationship, Kim’s past, the shadowy Zodiac organization).

In context, the pacing of the romance also worked better than I thought it would. I was worried that it would be a cliffhanger or a “We love each other but have to pretend we don’t because of Reasons” situation. Instead, the factors keeping them apart have real weight. They don’t know each other well and have no basis for trust (or, in Kim’s case, trustworthiness). They also have conflicting and, in many ways, opposing loyalties. And on top of all that,

Show Spoiler

Kim is a spy, or at least a gentleman of espionage.

When you get right down to it, about all they have going for them at this point is mutual pants feelings and reluctant fascination. That is definitely two books’ worth of issues to resolve, and I’m excited to see how it will happen.

Along with the pacing, I want to give a shout out to the historical setting. The years after WWI are a fascinating era that frequently gets oversimplified to “flappers and jazz.” I think Charles does a great job in this book (and her other books set in this period) of discussing the more complex aftereffects of the War, both in society and for individuals. In Slippery Creatures, both of the heroes are fundamentally changed by it, in very different ways.

Will saw a lot of combat, but is not particularly tormented by his past. He describes his reaction to the war as “a twist in the head that went the other way round to shell-shock.” However, his time in combat also left him with a deep distaste for authority, and specifically for following orders given by people who don’t understand their consequences. The first time I read the book, this came across as just being stubborn. I joked that his motivation was “SHAN’T,” because he kept refusing to do what anyone told him. But on second read, it’s not contrariness that drives him: it’s a need to be the person who is calling the shots in his own life. He’s been a tool for his country for a long time, and it’s left him terribly aware of the consequences of being used.

Enter Kim, who does nothing but use him. (Remember when I said they had a lot of issues? Yeah. A lot of issues.) Kim was supposed to serve in the military, but refused to sign up. Why he did it is left a bit of a mystery, but it’s clear that the decision changed his life, and not for the better. He’s jaded, but he also didn’t see the failures of authority firsthand the way that Will did, so in some ways he’s also more naive.

Watching those two radically different outlooks bounce off each other is really fun. However, it’s also an aspect of the story that feels unresolved: they find some common ground, but in the end neither of them changes. One of the most satisfying things for me in a romance is watching two characters influence each other to be different (and better) than they started. Because this is really just the first third of a romance, that element is not there yet, and I missed it.

No review of this book would be complete without mentioning the women. Will and Kim are (and I say this with love) a collective trash fire, but Maisie and Phoebe are the literal best. Maisie is Will’s friend and ally, and the only person who consistently uses more than two brain cells throughout the story. Phoebe is Kim’s fiancee, and …

Oh, uh, yeah, did I forget to mention that Kim’s engaged? So did he. (A lot. Of. Issues.)

In all seriousness, though, Phoebe is a fascinating character and I’m dying to see more of her in the rest of the series. She loves Kim (platonically, it’s a marriage of convenience), and is also deeply aware of his flaws. Like him, she leans hard into the Bright Young Thing persona, but occasionally the mask slips and we see hints of something deeper underneath. Also, she has one of my two favorite lines in the book:

“What I say is, one can be as moral as one likes but one should have the courtesy to do it in private, like any other bad habit.”

My other favorite line, and the one I hope will seal the deal if you’re on the fence about this one, comes immediately after the first time Will … uh, comes. It’s a pretty much perfect moment, so I’ll spoiler it for those who want to experience it in its natural habitat.

Show Spoiler

Ought he apologise for coming in his mouth? Would this be a good moment to restart the conversation about where Kim had learned to use a knife?

Thank God they were British. He took a deep breath. “Cup of tea?”

HASHTAG RELATABLE.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot. As a spy story with a gay twist, it gets a solid A. However, as a romance, it’s hard to grade because that part of the story isn’t done yet. Judging on the events of this book alone, I’d give the romance a B- for Kim’s behavior and the overall lack of change for the characters so far. I split the difference and went with a B+, but it was a tough decision!

Long story short, if you’re looking for a fun thriller and you don’t mind buckling up for the long-ish haul on the romance (or if you just miss used bookstores as much as I do), give it a try!

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Slippery Creatures by K.J. Charles

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  1. LisaC says:

    Totally agree, AJ. This book was amazing & I can’t recommend it enough!

  2. Gill says:

    Loved this book

  3. RebeccaA says:

    I agree too. I loved this book.

    CW: But I do want to warn people that there is a short discussion that legal consequences (i.e. not going to jail) for Kim are different because of his class. He doesn’t take that for granted. But in the current environment YMMV.

    Again I really liked this book, the characters, the book shop.

  4. ReneeG says:

    I just started this book – glad you mentioned that the HEA grows through the series, AJ!

    I read somewhere that the Bright Young Things was a reaction to war/pandemic trauma and survivor’s guilt. I wonder if we will get to see that aspect in the series.

  5. Lisa F says:

    Hmm, interesting – I would’ve put this one in a territory, but your reasons for why you didn’t do so are compelling, AJ!

  6. Melanie says:

    I loved this, and the fact that it’s primarily a thriller actually meant that it worked better for me, since low-conflict, quiet stories haven’t been holding my attention lately. The bookshop setting was just the icing on the cake; I found myself mentally picturing the story taking place in a secondhand bookstore that I visited often when I was in graduate school.

  7. gail says:

    Thanks for the warning. I’ve gotten caught up in a couple of series that took literally years to finish so I never go into them now until they’re complete.

  8. Kareni says:

    This sounds like an enjoyable read. Thanks for a balanced review, AJ.

  9. I loved this (though I have loved pretty much everything KJ Charles has written).

    I’m also delighted that this period post The Great War is getting some attention for authors recently. SO MUCH awfulness happened during the years of the war, and IIRC it forced militaries to change the way they changed soldiers–as well as tactics. (Look up the Christmas Truce of 1914.)

    The entire era is at times foreign and yet strangely modern; I’ve been comfort reading Agatha Christies, and the early Miss Marple books were written at pretty much at this time, and have been a perfect companion to this book as well as other new books set in that time period (Charles Todd, Anna Lee Huber, Allie Therin)

    As someone who started as a mystery reader, this book hit the spot for books I’ve been wanting for awhile.

  10. cleo says:

    What a great, thoughtful review. I loved this book so much.

  11. Lexica says:

    I shall refrain from posting any of my favorite quotes from this because everyone who reads it should have the pleasure of encountering them in context. There are more than a few, some of which I’m daydreaming about turning into cross-stitch or using to practice hand lettering.

    Also, KJ Charles tweeted back in November about researching the Bright Young Things of the 1920s for this book. She starts from wanting to invent time travel just so I can go back and kill the next person who talks about “drinkie-poos” and goes on to explain how “everyone dies horribly” could, in the right circumstances, be a HEA.

  12. chacha1 says:

    I had this one on pre-order, read it the day it landed, and have since read it again. I agree completely with the review and yet I would give the book an A+, in part because it *didn’t* try to insta-solve any of those substantial character-and-class issues. Those guys didn’t have TIME to try and solve anything! I’m positive KJC will deal with things properly in books 2 and 3.

    I won’t spoiler anything for those who haven’t read it yet, but do want to say the rescue sequence worked for me on ten levels. As did the denouement.

    For those who haven’t yet read KJC’s Magpie Lord trilogy, many of the same romance-blocking conflicts exist there. The way they’re dealt with in those previous books is, I suspect, a good map to how they’ll be dealt with here.

    Also: I miss dusty, musty old bookstores.

  13. Starling says:

    @gail, the author informs us that the trilogy is written and the second and third books are coming in July and September, so keep this one bookmarked!

  14. Momo says:

    I would give this book a B. My view re: the ethics of Kim’s actions in the story is… wildly opposite to that of the author of this review.

  15. Ellie says:

    @chacha1 – I came here to try to find out how the storyline in terms of the not quite a happy ending compared to the Magpie Lords, so thank you very much for your comment!

  16. chacha1 says:

    Hi @Ellie glad that was helpful. Another useful parallel might be Joanna Chambers’ ‘Enlightenment’ trilogy. It takes three books to get to the HEA, but it’s time well spent.

    And if you like that kind of thing, I might also recommend the Amberlough trilogy by Lara Elena Donnelly. Those heroes are a total trash fire. I couldn’t stop reading. 🙂

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