ARC Review: Soul to Keep (Rented Heart #2) by Garrett Leigh

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.

Todd's rating:

After loving book 1, "Rented Heart," I had extremely high hopes for Jamie's story, since the majority of the drama in the first book happened to Zac as a side-effect of Jamie's continuing, terrible life choices.

Book 2, "Soul to Keep," began one year after Jamie had been shipped off to California, to go through rehab and begin his long road to recovery from heroin addiction, so the majority of Jamie's most challenging struggles had already taken place, fast forwarded and entirely off-page.

But California was a bit "too perfect" for Jamie's tastes, so his itchy feet led him to randomly stick a pin in a map and move his life to the middle-of-nowhere, Matlock Bath, England to force himself to make a fresh start.

Then Jamie met "wounded hero" Marc, an ex-Army medic, who had lost a lower leg to an IED in Iraq and currently worked as an ER doctor, on his flight from Chicago to the UK.

Marc's deep-seated desire to take care of others immediately drew him to the recovering addict he'd been seated beside during some rough turbulence, then they found themselves being neighbors once Marc arrived back home.


However, from that point on in the story, I felt as though nothing much *really* happened, as the book began the same slow march from "they meet" to "they lived happily ever after" that I've seen hundreds of times before.

I kept waiting for something unexpected and exciting to happen, but it never really did, so other than this being a nice, somewhat-expected, comfort-healing story, I can't really think of a single thing that stood out as being unique.

I did actually like both MC's; however, as I didn't find the story very eventful, I'll definitely end up remembering the details from book 1 much more vividly than those in this book.

I've loved several of Leigh's previous books, but this one only came in at around 2.75 stars.

My ARC copy of the book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.

Get the book:

Thanks for visiting our blog and I hope you enjoyed my review!

Buylinks are provided as a courtesy and do not constitute an endorsement of or affiliation with this book, author or bookseller listed.