REVIEW: 'Soul to Keep' by Garrett Leigh
Title: Soul to Keep
Series: Rented Heart #2
Author: Garrett Leigh
Published: April 2, 2018
Publisher: Self-Published/Fox Love Press
Cover Artist: Garrett Leigh/Black Jazz Design
Genre: Contemporary Romance; Erotic Romance
Length: 210 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Angst; Comfort/Hurt; Disability: Amputee; May/December; Disorder: OCD; Wounded Warrior; HEA; Standalone; CW: Addiction
About Soul to Keep
Standalone second book in the LAMBDA nominated Rented Heart series.
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.
5 HEART READ
REVIEW:
In Soul to Keep, a new standalone edition in Garrett Leigh’s Rented Heart series, Leigh presents men who are too beaten down for intimacy. With great care and respect, she demonstrates how love revitalizes and provides the fortitude to recover.
After surviving Iraq as a combat physician, Marc Ramsey is barely fazed by what he encounters as an Admission and Emergency Room Doctor. He uses the job’s adrenaline to forget he left good friends and half a leg on the battlefield. Leigh describes him as “addicted to responsibility.”
Jaime Yorke escaped addiction - going cold-turkey on a plane bound for Southern California, where his best friend’s partner had given him a job cooking in the U.S. branch of their business. Now a year sober, Jaime realizes he must return to England to face his future.
With great care and respect, she demonstrates how love revitalizes and provides the fortitude to recover.
After yet another leg surgery in L.A., Marc meets Jaime on the plane back to England. Soon they discover they live in the same town. Both know there’s a mutual attraction, but nothing is easy. Jaime’s sobriety has brought his OCD to the forefront. Marc thinks to himself that Jaime has a “special brand of silence that was so disturbing – like he’d forgotten how to scream.”
Jaime, who still suffers cravings, distrusts himself and the safety of anyone he befriends. After hurting loved ones through addiction, he must be especially careful around good-hearted Marc, who Jaime warns, “‘I don’t find storms. I am the storm. I fuck everything up.’”
While Marc loves the role of caregiver, he’s never let anyone care for him. To win Jaime, Marc must convince the younger man that his psychological wounds are real, and physically-based, as well. Can Jaime believe he has anything to offer another wounded soul?
Leigh is brilliant in choosing conditions with strong similarities. Like Marc’s PTSD flashbacks, and phantom limb pains, Jaime’s cravings are physical sensations so realistic that they seem like hallucinations. Leigh offers insight after insight into what she calls the “never-ending thunderstorm” of addictive desire.
Jaime and Marc are half-alive until they breathe purpose into one another.
Because these “hallucinations” prevent each men from seeing himself clearly, neither understands how to help himself, But through each other’s perceptions, recovery is possible. Marc informs Jaime, “‘I care about you because you’re the first person in years to look at me and really see me…I care about you because you let me.’”
Leigh’s characters do not expect love to fix them. Marc reminds himself of this, thinking, “Kissing Jamie was as easy as breathing, even though he knew it wouldn’t chase Jamie’s demons away.” Still, her optimism in love is evident. Jaime and Marc are half-alive until they breathe purpose into one another.
I especially loved Soul to Keep’s theme. The miracle of self-acceptance may be the hardest road for individuals to walk, and is also the most rewarding. Leigh shows readers that while no one can walk another's path, the journey is far more enjoyable with friends. And for this, I give five very open hearts.
A copy of Soul to Keep was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by Garrett Leigh, 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.
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 renowned LGBTAQ+ photographer Dan Burgess.
For more from Garrett be sure and visit her website!
