Review: A story for your inner angst Godess (or God )
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2014
Awesome heart wrenching book. My gob was well and truly smacked. Angst and emotions done in the best possible way. This book tell us the story of Jed and Max, but also both their families and Jeds' comrades in arm, fellow soldiers and friends. And a great dog. These are the ingredients Ms. Leigh mixed together to give as a fantastic story of pain, loss and love all well seasoned with top quality angst.Jed leaves active service after being severely injured and finds himself not only facing physical rehab but also batlling a debilitating and chronic illness. He's a veteran of many wars and spec ops and without many options available, goes back to his native town, place he left after being thrown out by his father for being gay. He stays for awhile with his brother with whom he has a conflictive relationship and gets to meet Nick's family, the wife and two little girls, for the first time. The convivence isn't easy and finally he rents a room in Max's cabin. Max happens to be Nick's brother in love, a younger guy with his own health issues. From that moment on we are taken in quite a journey. Jed is jaded, emotionally shunned after more than a decade of horrific war experiences finally ending in tragic loss for his team. We follow him as he slowly open his heart to the children, reconnects with old friends and starts the long journey towards recovery. Slowly, he and Max get to know each other in a tentative way. Max and his sister are British emigrees and they have some secrets and scars of their own. But Jed's illness, one he refuses to address seriously and hides from everybody, comes back with a vengeance.From then on I just wanted to sing "Lord I wonder how much longer do I have to sing the Blues"!The narrative manages to convey raw feelings with a clear and deep emotional prose, avoiding all genre's clichés. All characters in this book are alive, complex and tri-dimensional. There's no titillation  , no corniness, no cheesiness. The sex scenes are few, short and quite to the point. No Instalurve, no hanky panky in the shower, no sudden attacks of the lust in inappropriate moments or places. Only Love, as the title of this book relays so well.There was nothing, absolutely nothing I didn't like. I touched me so deeply that at the last 25% of it, I actually found myself with a wet face. I would like to pretend the culprit were the spring allergies, but I would have been kidding myself.What else can I say? Just go and get it. It's more than worth every cent you pay for it. It's a story atuned with the reality faced by many war veterans. It's a book that deserves to be read.