Sweet, enjoyable historical, not quite fluff, but not earth-shattering. I'll go with well-done and engaging. Though the blurb makes it sound like the hero's childhood could rival Jane Eyre's in misery and alienation, the actual situation was far milder and more ordinary. Given the preponderance of insanely wretched childhoods in fiction, the author's restraint here comes off as fresh and original. Sadly, the conceit of the hero's having to trade his body to pay off gambling debts is pretty stale, though it ends up being a lot less lurid than it might have. In its defense, the plot device was very popular in 19th century fiction as well, which fits since this book could double as a thesaurus for Regency vocab and expressions. Mostly I liked that aspect, since it managed not to feel too researchy and it spiced up the narrative voice, though I couldn't help feeling there were a lot more "historical" expressions here than one finds in novels actually written during the Regency period--I'll have to think on why that might be.
Definitely recommend for fans of M/M historicals.