RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 'Finding Home' by Garrett Leigh
Title: Finding Home
Author: Garrett Leigh
Published: October 9, 2017
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Cover Artist: G.D. Leigh/Black Jazz Design
Genre: Young Adult; Contemporary Romance
Length: 200 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Angst; Comfort/Hurt; Family Drama; HEA; Mental Illness; CW: Domestic Violence, Murder, PTSD, Addiction, Explicit Violence
About Finding Home How do you find a home when your heart is in ashes?
With their mum dead and their father on remand for her murder, Leo Hendry and his little sister, Lila, have nothing in the world but each other. Broken and burned, they’re thrust into the foster care system. Leo shields Lila from the fake families and forced affection, until the Poulton household is the only place left to go.
Charlie de Sousa is used to other kids passing through the Poulton home, but there’s never been anyone like his new foster brother. Leo’s physical injuries are plain to see, but it’s the pain in his eyes that draws Charlie in the most.
Day by day, they grow closer, but the darkness inside Leo consumes him. He rejects his foster parents, and when Charlie gets into trouble, Leo’s attempt to protect him turns violent. When Leo loses control, no one can reach him—except Charlie. He desperately needs a family—a home—and only Charlie can show him the way.
5 HEART READ
REVIEW:
Garrett Leigh’s new young adult romance, Finding Home, is as complex and eloquent as her adult erotic romances.
Readers accustomed to highly compassionate characters won’t be disappointed when her teens’ empathy is coated with insecure sneering.
Fifteen-year-old Leo Hendry shields his four-year-old deaf sister, Lila, from watching their dad kill their mom, and then set their home afire. After several foster homes, the children land with Reg and Kate Poulter, recurrent foster parents, who have adopted two of the children. Kate is also deaf, and the family knows sign language, a plus for Lila.
But Leo, whose burned arm is a constant reminder of what they escaped, feels dead inside. He’s suspicious of affection and concern, and aggressive when adult men touch Lila. Leo even bristles if he’s called “mate.”
As Leigh notes, “The fire had taken everything – home, things, Wendy’s still-warm body. In this strange house, surrounded by strangers, Leo’s name was all he and Lila had left.”
Charlie, the Poulter’s gentle fifteen-year-old, (who they took in at four) prefers to draw, or melt into the woodwork. His history includes double abandonment, first by his parents and then his prior adoptive family. Besides, Charlie knows he’s gay, and doesn’t want more rejection.
When Kate tells Charlie about their plans to foster Leo and Lila, she hopes he’ll help his new foster brother. “‘You’re a good balm for a quick temper, Chicken. I should know,’” she tells him. Like any teen, Charlie is baffled by this perception of him.
He identifies with Leo’s pain, but wary, sensing it bites extremely deep.
Finding Home’s secondary characters are well developed, Kate and Reg, as seen through teens eyes, are more powerful than they, themselves feel. Andy, the oldest child from Reg’s first marriage, is solid and reassuring. Fliss, Reg and Kate’s first adoptee, who is Charlie’s nemesis and hidden admirer, deserves a book of her own.
There’s a lovely off-handed exchange between Kate and Andy, foreshadowing the main conflict. Andy is discussing their cat. “’I think she’s evil.’” Kate replies, “’I don’t believe that, sweetheart. She just needs some love.’” But Reg has made it clear. Leo can only stay as long as his behaviors don’t hurt their adopted children.
As Charlie slowly entices Leo out of his emptiness, readers know there must be an explosion.
Will these parents see past Leo’s aggressive turmoil, to help the wounded child Charlie can perceive? Or is Charlie too naïve?
Leigh specializes in slowly developing trust, won through the small things we do for one another, like when Charlie plays Xbox with his Leo, or makes him toast for breakfast. As Reg notes, “’Routine is good for all of us in times of great change.’”
Appropriate to a YA audience, Leigh keeps Charlie and Leo’s attraction to “snogging.” Yet she still manages an erotic arc. We wonder what part of the boys’ increased intimacy, (kisses or self-revelation) is healing.
Are these deeds mere distractions, moves to avoid the tough emotions and choices of adolescence, of those overcoming trauma? There is sublime tension as Leo uncoils and Charlie is faced with speaking his own truths.
I found myself inclined to read Finding Home twice, first to find out what happened and then to appreciate the small details which brought about big results.
For a plot that is as sweet as it is horrific, Finding Home is completely captivating, realistic, and revitalizing.
By exploring an extremely difficult subject with great sensitivity towards her characters and young readers, Leigh earned my first five hearts to a YA novel.
A copy of Finding Home was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by Riptide Publishing, at no cost and with no expectations in return. We offer our fair and honest opinion on behalf of our readers.
Meet the Author
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. In 2017, she won the EPIC award in contemporary romance with her military novel, Between Ghosts, and the contemporary romance category in the Bisexual Book Awards with her novel What Remains.
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.
For more from Garrett be sure and visit her website!
