...maybe finally he’d be a different person, someone he liked more than the person he was now. Someone who could let sweetness and softness happen to him without his throat closing up in fear and suspicion. Someone who could be loved. [p. 163]
Tam Brocken runs a tea shop in a village. He's lonely, if you discount -- as he does -- the more-or-less weekly occasions on which he has sex with Lord Lyford. He always leaves hastily, and it's just sex, so that's all right -- even if Lyford (who he's hated since childhood) keeps flirting with him. And then Tam and Lyford are assigned to run the matchmaking tent at the village festival. Together.
Then Tam, trying to escape the village gossips, meets the goddess Angarat on the road, and she imparts a few home truths ... including that Tam is stuck in a rut of his own devising, and that he should keep an open mind about Lyford, and give him a chance to redeem himself.
This is a story about second chances, divine favor, and trying to be a better person. It's a sweet story, though Tam is often far from sweet: and it's also a rural idyll, with gods walking the world and interacting with humans, and with a really strong sense of Lyford and Tam's love for the land. A gentle and life-affirming novel that's often very funny and (usually at other points) very steamy.
Read because: wishlist hit, plus I'd just finished a book by Rowland's fellow Serpent Freya Marske. Though the two are very different writers, there's a commonality of timbre. I also felt that the explicit sex scenes qualified this as a fill for the 'erotic fantasy' prompt on a book challenge. Also, 'set at harvest time'.
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