Friday 20 April 2018

Soul To Keep (Rented Hearts #2) by Garrett Leigh - Review Tour





Length: 62,000 words

Cover Design: Black Jazz Design

Rented Heart Series

Rented Heart (Book #1) - Universal Buy Link

Blurb

Recovering addict Jamie Yorke has returned to England from California. With no home or family to speak of, he sticks a pin in a map and finds a small town in the Derbyshire Peak District. Matlock Bath is a quiet place—he just needs to get there, keep his head down, and stay clean. Simple, right? Until a chance meeting on the flight home alters the course of his so-called life forever.

Ex-Army medic Marc Ramsey is recovering from life-changing combat injuries while pulling nights as a trauma specialist at the local hospital. Keeping busy is a habit he can’t quit, but when Jamie—so wild and beautiful—bursts into his life, working himself into the ground isn’t as compelling as it used to be.


Marc falls hard, but chaos lurks behind Jamie’s fragile facade. He’s winning his battle against addiction, but another old foe is slowly consuming him. Both men have weathered many storms, but the path to the peace they deserve might prove the roughest ride yet.


Review



I finished Rented Heart, the prequel to this book, only a day ago and I have to say I’m glad I read them in quick succession. Having the first story still fresh in my head made it very clear how similar and connected these two stories were while it also stressed the differences between them.

Just like the earlier book, Soul to Keep tells the story of two men who see themselves as broken finding each other and through their ever stronger bond learning, to accept who and what they are as well as find the belief that they are good enough for each other and for life in general.

We met Jamie before, in Rented Heart. While I wouldn’t say that you need to read that book first in order to enjoy this one, I’m pretty sure that you’ll get more out of Soul to Keep if you are aware of the back story.

A year has passed since the events in Rented Heart, and while Jamie may have come off the drugs, he is still dealing with a long list of issues on which he doesn’t really have a handle. From the moment he meets Marc, the older man has a calming influence on Jamie.

Marc has lost the lower half of one of his legs during a military operation. While he’s managing to live an at first glance ‘normal’ life, he’s lonely and stuck.

Very slowly the friendship between those two men grows into something more, but for the longest time both Marc and Jamie are holding back. Jamie doesn’t believe he’s good enough for Marc (or for anybody really) and convinced he’s destined to destroy everything he holds dear. Marc on the other hand is all too aware that coming on strongly would send Jamie running.

This story is less dramatic than the one in Rented Heart, and somewhat less angsty. Or maybe I should say, angst-filled in a different way. In this book the feelings are generated by the emotional state and thoughts of both men rather than by violence or other outside factors.

I’m hard pressed to pick my favourite from these two books. Both were touching and at times ridiculously hot stories. Both of them had main characters it was impossible not to emphasize with. And both of them captivated me enough to read them in one sitting. If you forced me to choose I’d probably say Soul to Keep is my personal winner, but I’m not sure I could explain why and it would be only a marginal victory. The best advice I could give any reader is to just read both these books.





April 9 - My Fiction Nook
April 16 - OMG Reads

Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer and book designer, currently working for Dreamspinner Press, Loose Id, Riptide Publishing, and Fox Love Press.

Garrett's debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards.


When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.


Garrett is also an award winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com, and co-owns the specialist stock site moonstockphotography.com with photographer Dan Burgess.


Hosted By Signal Boost Promotions


No comments:

Post a Comment