Review - Sculptor's Desire

This second installment of the Gallant Gentlemen’s Guild (G3) series, which started off with Artist’s Touch, follows a new pair of unlikely lovers. Rocco is a sculptor in the Guild with a very fixed idea of the perfect specimen of male physique that he’s looking for to model for his masterpiece, to be auctioned off at the Guild’s next charity event. Unfortunately, he’s so exacting in his standards that no man fits his requirements.

Devin is every inch a New Age man. He teaches yoga and meditation, and sees people’s auras. He likes to help people, and judging by his aura, Rocco needs a lot of help. Unfortunately, down-to-earth Rocco finds Devin’s talk of meditation and auras off-putting in the extreme, despite the man’s physical beauty. Even when Devin shows up at Rocco’s ‘casting call’ for models and proves to have just the body he’s looking for, Rocco still resists and doesn’t hire Devin. It’s more than just Devin’s outlook that puts Rocco off. In spite of the New Age talk, he’s very attracted to the other man, and getting involved with Devin would be far too complicated, or that’s what he tells himself.

Of course, it shouldn’t spoil anything to say that the two do get together, and things do get complicated, especially when Devin’s thug of an ex takes an interest in the goings-on in G3.

“Sculptor’s Desire” continues the same over the top view of the art world and the Guild seen in the first book. While it made “Artist’s Touch” seem just a little silly, this time around it wears more than a little thin. It’s hard to believe any group of people, let alone artists, getting along as well as the Guild does. And then there’s the money. Even artists at the top of the art world don’t have the kind of cash these guys seem to throw around. It’s all getting just a little too unbelievable to sustain the story line.

As for the two heroes of this book, they’re each charming in their own way, but once again they’re more archetype than real characters. Both seem to have backstories that would make them more rounded, but we get too little of their histories too late to really care about them. Devin’s view of his work is clear enough, but we get very little sense of Rocco’s work or what his sculptures look like. You get the idea that the author has very little idea of how life sculptors work. As with the books’ view of the art world in general, it reflects a very superficial view of the work involved in creating something.

No doubt these flaws may be seen as nits by some, or many. The storytelling does carry things along quite well, so you may not notice these details, especially if you have no experience of the world in which the characters purportedly live. As with the first book, the story is diverting if without any depth.

“Sculptor’s Desire” is available from All Romance Ebooks and Amazon.