This is another book that if Goodreads offered half stars I might rank two and and a half but I'm rounding up because two stars seems a bit too harsh. I liked aspects of this but it also left me wanting more. I liked the two leads, I was pleased with how Sebastian wrote stylistically, and I thought this story had a lot of potential but it kind of fizzled out for me in the execution. 
 I think I wanted this to be darker and more dramatic than it was. You have Lawrence's dark past and suspected madness, Georgie's criminal past and fear of his criminal associate, who he double crossed by refusing to complete a job, and the forbidden nature of a nineteenth century gay relationship. The setting is this literally rotting estate in Cornwall. The potential for drama was off the charts. Yet I found this quite low key and there didn't seem to be a lot going on to propel the story forward. I think I wanted more heft. A more tense plot, more fleshed out supporting characters, and more texture and depth to the main relationship. 
 Lawrence and Georgie didn't have a lot of contrived drama, which was nice, and Sebastian dodged the "contrived misunderstanding" trap, and thankfully she abandoned the "we bicker like we hate each other because of our instant sexual tension" shtick after Georgie and Lawrence's initial meeting. So she avoided common genre tropes that annoy me, but I never really bought these two as a love connection as opposed to a lust connection. I liked the idea of Lawrence and Georgie working together, and wish I had seen more of that.