I liked the author's writing style but had difficulty with the characters. I really couldn't see much appeal to either of them. Well, maybe that's not entirely true, I guess I could sort of see some appeal to Jacques. And I could see that Etienne's submission was appealing to him, but he seemed to find Etienne's simpleness almost as obnoxious as I did. So then I couldn't really understand why he'd be with Etienne, which made Jacques less appealing to me, too. There was some character growth and redemption at the end, but I think it was too little too late to really satisfy me.