The Dickens With Love is a Christmas story that proves that also a library mouse can fall in love, and surprise surprise, for another mouse too! Yes, since the classical Cinderfella story, mixed with Christmas feelings, would suggest that our hero is being rescued from a cold and lonely Christmas day by a knight in shining armour, and instead, of shining, the other hero has only the horn-rimmed glasses.

James Winter is a book hunter, better he was a very good book hunter before losing his credibility when the antiquarian he was working for was found out with the hand in the jam, meaning that he was selling fake rare books. Just from that you have probably understood that James is not exactly Indiana Jones, the biggest adventures he probably had in his life was to find a rare book in the attic of some old lady, but James loves books and for him, even that was a fantastic adventure. Now he is deprived of all of that, he is forced to work in a department store selling cheap books to even cheaper buyers and he is dying inside. When an unscrupulous man asks him to deal in his name for a unpublished manuscript by Charles Dickens, even if James doesn’t like the man, the chance is too great to renounce.

The owner of the rare book, Sedgwick Crisparkle is an English professor who has some hidden reasons to auction the book far from England and in a as much as possible anonymous way. There is a bit of mystery here, probably Josh Lanyon is not able to write a novel without a bit of mystery, but actually it’s a really old fashioned and sweet mystery, very much in line with the entire story.

Anyway when James meets Sedge, the real reason behind the meeting is soon forgotten, and they are swept away in a whirlwind romance… with green and red flavoured condoms and posh hotels. It seems that Sedge is more interesting in tasting life (pun intended), in each possible way, and soon is better than later, almost essential. Sedge is like a child on a Christmas morning, eager to unwrap all the toys to then decide which toy will be the first to play with.

James is a bit disoriented, Sedge has the attitude of a stuffy English professor, and the grace of an elephant, but then suddenly he looks James with yearning eyes, demanding love… well not exactly love, he is demanding sex, but still with the eyes of a puppy, so that James is unable to resist. Problem is that Sedge is also impulsive and easy to come out with sharp words, and James is still quite sensible on some arguments. The two together seem to work only when they are not speaking and also when the alcohol helped them to loose a bit of their inhibition.

What probably I like most of both men is that they are so sweet and tender, they are not at all macho man, neither Sedge when he is trying to be gallant, he is more a kitten who is trying to growl like a lion. But then there is no need to knights in shining armours in this story, there are no real dangers and the only think you can hurt are feelings. After all we are not speaking of deadly weapon, but of an old leather manuscript. Even the villain is not so dangerous and the worst thing that can happen is to go back home with a black eye.

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