Captain Phillip Dacre returns to England and his three children after a voyage on which he lost his lieutenant, whom he loved but to whom he never confessed his full emotions. The children have driven away one tutor and governess after another and so have landed under the supervision of the local vicar, Ben Sedgwick. It is loosely a gay late Georgian Sound of Music, "with fewer children and no musical numbers."
This book is a delight. I enjoyed Sedgwick's thoughts on religion and sexuality, reasoning that when the Bible forbids something almost everyone does "like eating bacon or tossing one's self off" some nuance must have been lost because God can't possibly care about it. And that Captain Dacre, stern and initially determined to restore a ship's order to his home, is happy about his realization that Sedgwick might actually be a terrible vicar because he'd rather spend time with a terrible vicar than "a Godly one" was counter-intuitive and made me smile.
Sebastian's next book is not in this series, and while I'm sure I'll love it, too, I'll be looking forward to getting back to the Sedgwicks later this year.
Overall: B