A Rocky Return Home Turns into Love

I hadn't read any novels by Garrett Leigh before, but am now looking forward to reading more.  Here's an excerpt from my review of Only Love that was posted today at The Romance Reviews:

A mentally and physically scarred veteran reluctantly returns home after fourteen years only to find home is where his heart is.

At thirty-two, Jed Cooper knows his military life is at an end because of a chronic stomach disease and the debilitating wounds he received during his last deployment. When his younger brother Nick visits him in the hospital, Jed agrees to return to their small hometown of Ashton outside Portland.

Since Jed wants to get to know Nick's wife Kim and their two daughters, and because Jed has nowhere else to go, he at first accepts an invitation to stay with Nick's family. When Nick's townhouse begins to feel too crowded and Nick's drinking worsens, Jed agrees to move into the spare bedroom at the beachside home where Kim's adult brother Max lives.

Twenty-five year old Max, an epileptic, and his service dog Flo have carved out an idyllic life in their cabin by the lake. Max creates hand-hewn furniture to sell and lives an uncomplicated life, raising his own food. When he has seizures, Flo is trained to get help, so Max is fairly self-sufficient.

Jed and Max seem to rub on very well together, forging a friendship and then falling in love. In fact, for a while Max is even able to concoct meals that Jed's chronic stomach illness can tolerate.

Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

Two Review Day

Well, this is a first: Two of my reviews are featured on two different online sites.  Wow.

On the upside is Toy Run by Charley Descoteaux, one of Dreamspinner's Advent stories.  I opted to read three of the stories, and two of them turned out to be about Hanukkah, which even though it's celebrated over a number of days isn't really considered Advent material.

No matter.  Descoteaux's short story is a wonderfully cute mix of bikers, toys for children, and comfort and joy--all the ingredients for a happy holiday season.  It also includes three dogs, two bars, and rain and sleet in Oregon.  What's not to like, right?

The downside of the reviews is Brad Vance's A Little Too Broken, which should have been a spectacular story, but veered off into sex before settling the more important issues Vance tackles--double amputation, service dogs, HIV-positive lifestyle, and PTSD.  Somehow deciding how the protagonists will manage to have meaningful sex takes precedence over the more important details of how they will order their lives in order to live together for a few days, much less a lifetime.

If Vance decides to rework his novella, I'd love to reread it.  I hate to see potential like this go to waste.

How Could I Forget?

I saw this cover on AAR this morning and thought, "I'd like to read that book.  Wasn't the sample on my Kindle recently?"  As I read the review, the book sounded familiar, really familiar, like I'd discussed the plot with my husband in the last couple of months.  Then I saw the review signature.  I was reading my review of The Final Line by Kendall McKenna; that was my signature at the bottom of the review!

And that's the life of a book reviewer who reviewed a huge number of books in a couple of weeks in order to take non-review books on vacation.

I currently have nine print galleys and five e-galleys on my Kindle to read and review.  Four reviews have a due date of October 1 while the others will be written as I finish reading the galleys.  I also have two samples on my Kindle of books that I might review.  We'll see.

When people ask me what I'm currently reading I often don't know.  Titles don't stick with me, but plots do.  After the first two paragraphs of my review of The Final Line, I fondly remembered the book since I was intrigued at how McKenna would resolve his soldier's PTSD issues.  And because the book doesn't paint a "love conquers all, especially PTSD" picture, I highly recommend it to readers.

PTSD Written Realistically

Love conquers all, right?  Not when we're talking psychological damage, I don't think.  Fortunately, Aundrea Singer seems to agree with me, given the gritty romance in Black Hawk Tattoo.  (My review of the book went live today at AAR, All About Romance.)

As I read through the book, learning how supportive Gabe was to Jake, I had this horrible feeling that I was going to have to suspend belief and think that Jake's acute case of PTSD was going to be "cured" by Gabe's love.  And while I really, really wish that were true, I know from experience--particularly from my experience with my cousin Jerry who was severely wounded in the Vietnam war--that love doesn't conquer all.

The torment Jake's sister Alice goes through is the torment my Aunt Mary Claire and Uncle Jerry went through with their son, my cousin.  Unfortunately, in the mid 1960s, support services for returning vets with PTSD weren't really available, and suffering on the part of the vets and their families was the norm.

Fortunately, this is a love story, so there is a happy ending.  It may not be the fairytale ending we'd all like, but it's happier than the one my cousin Jerry had since he never found his Gabe and died much too young.