Review: Garrett Leigh Is A Talented Author
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 19, 2014
I believe that "Slide" may be the first Garrett Leigh book I've read.The only question in my mind is, how did I miss her?The first thing you notice about this book is that it is both extraordinarily well written and edited. Not a false step, a bad description, or a fumbled bit of dialog in the whole thing. And, most remarkably, Ms. Leigh, according to her biography, lives in London, yet the feeling, idioms and situations are all decidedly American. That comes as quite a surprise to me. I've read many other books placed in America but written by Brits or Australians, and there was always a tell - an expression, an attitude, a spelling, something that betrayed the author's native language and country. But not a single one in this book, which is a remarkable accomplishment - like a foreign actor without a trace of an accent!The characters were beyond engaging. Angst-ridden, for sure (after all it is an MM romance), but wrapped in a real mystery. One of the main characters, Pete, is a Chicago paramedic who sees things at work that no one should have to witness, including burn victims and victims of abuse. In one such case, he is assaulted with a baseball bat by the lunatic, sadistic husband of a woman he was trying to save from a vicious beating. I don't want to let any spoilers out of the bag, but this lunatic is tied to one of the worst cases he has to deal with in the coming weeks and even the man that Pete loves. That's Ash, a talented tattoo artist who spent years homeless in Philadelphia, doing street art on the sidewalks of the city to eke out a bare subsistence. Moved from home to home and abuser to abuser in the foster care system until he finally ran away at age 15, he finds his first real home, and his first real love with Pete in Chicago.It's a hell of a ride for the two as they try to deal with scars that Ash bears both on his body and in his heart and mind, and that's what the book is really about - surviving abuse through love.And a beautiful book it is. I recommend it most highly.I'm about to start the sequel and I just can't wait to dig into it and continue following the story spun by this amazingly talented author.