Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  Gideon

SERIES:  Finding Home

AUTHOR:  Lily Morton

NARRATOR:  Joel Leslie

PUBLISHER:  Self-published

LENGTH:  9 hours and 43 minutes

RELEASE DATE:  June 22, 2020

BLURB:

Gideon Ramsay is so far in the closet he should be a talking faun.

A talented, mercurial, and often selfish man, Gideon has everything he should want in life. Fame, money, acting awards – he has it all. Everything but honesty. At the advice of his agent, Gideon has concealed his sexuality for years. But it’s starting to get harder to hide, and his increasingly wild behavior is threatening to destroy his career. Then, he’s laid low by a serious illness and into his life comes Eli Jones.

Eli is everything that Gideon can’t understand. He’s sunny tempered, friendly, and optimistic. Even worse, he’s unaffected by grumpiness and sarcasm, which forms 90 percent of Gideon’s body weight. And now, Gideon is trapped with him without any recourse to the drugs and alcohol that have previously eased his way through awkward situations.

However, as Gideon gets to know the other man, he finds himself wildly attracted to his lazy smiles and warm, scruffy charm that seem to fill a hole inside Gideon that’s been empty for a long time. Will he give in to this incomprehensible attraction when it could mean the end of everything that he’s worked for?

From the best-selling author of the Mixed Messages series comes a story about a man who needs to realize that being true to yourself is really just a form of finding home. This is the third book in the Finding Home series, but it can be listened to as a stand-alone.

REVIEW:

Note:  As this is book 3 in this series, it contains major spoilers for books 1 and 2 🙂

Famous (or infamous) actor Gideon Ramsay has misbehaved himself into a health crisis.  He’s been self-medicating for so long and now he’s recovering from pneumonia and a collapsed lung.  His brother Milo is gravely concerned for him as is his best friend Niall.  He’s not allowed to fly post his illness, so Milo books him on a cruise back to England and he’s to be looked after by a nurse.  But the catch is, it’s a golden oldies cruise – so Gideon will be roughly half the age of the majority of the passengers and Milo has even lied about his age – making him OLDER – to get the booking 😛  Gideon is furious, but he honestly doesn’t have the strength to fight.

Eli Jones is a nurse who takes on private patients between a lot of his foreign travel nursing gigs.  He isn’t really sure what he’s gotten himself into.  And Gideon’s manager is bloody awful!  But Gideon really does need to be looked after.  He’s lost a lot of weight, he looks worn out and he’s not got much strength – in fact he’s in a wheelchair initially.  He barely can stand long enough to shower, so Eli’s bound and determined to get him to some better place health wise during the trip.  And that means NO alcohol, plenty of good food, rest and fresh air – all under Eli’s watchful eye.

Frankie, Gideon’s manager threatens Eli immediately.  He’s convinced Gideon that is he comes out, his career will be gone.  And up until this point, Gideon’s career has been the one thing that matters to him.  Because of his family situation, Frankie has outsized influence on Gideon and while it’s been slowly eating away at his soul, Gideon has trusted Frankie on this one thing and has lied about it his entire career.

Over the course of the cruise, Gideon comes to see Eli in a new light and the attraction flares.  But he’s not willing to jeopardize either himself or Eli with doing anything about it while he’s still in Eli’s care as a health professional.  They do have a marvelous time together and Eli makes Gideon want to be honest – with himself and with Eli and more importantly, he’s beginning to feel like he has to be honest with the rest of the world.  But Eli has another job booked post the cruise that will take him out of the country for months.  They agree to keep in touch and see where they land after that posting is completed.

When they meet again at Cia an Mor, it’s like they cannot possibly get enough of each other.  Oz and Silas and Milo and Niall are there supporting them – some more reluctantly than others 😉 but it’s locked away on this lovely estate in the Cotswolds that they talk about what a future might look like and what Gideon wants to do about his life, his career, his future.  Of course you know that there is an unexpected turn of events that will force Gideon to make a decision once and for all 😉

Once again Lily Morton has provided a lovely gift for us in the story of Gideon, Milo’s brother and Niall’s best friend, who we met in book 2.   Frankly he’s kind of an asshole book 2, and I was interested to see how the author would support the character growth required for him to become a sympathetic and likable figure in this one.  We do get a much clearer picture of Gideon and the forces at play that have led him to make the decisions that he has around his life and career which redeems him quite a bit.  We also get to see the scales falling from his eyes and he begins to realize what the true toll has been on him to try to be something he’s not.  And when he finally finds someone that he feels like he can truly be himself with, it may come at a cost of all the things that he heretofore has held most dear.  But his friends, who are really his found family, help him along the path to making the decisions that will finally make him happy and content.  For his part, Eli is a gem of a character.  He’s funny and snarky and smart and has his own path as well as a nurse.  He doesn’t put up with Gideon’s crap and keeps him in line when he threatens to go off the rails 🙂  He fits in perfectly with Oz and Silas and Milo and Niall too which is really important to Gideon.  The villain in this story is quite broadly drawn, but honestly after seeing what we’ve seen about the entertainment business the last few years, completely and 100% believable!  As usual, it’s a great narration by Joel Leslie with all the voices and accents that make listening to this story such a delight.  The marriage between author and narrator in this series has been absolute perfection.  Highly recommended and I can’t wait for my next Lily Morton/Joel Leslie collaboration 😀

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Amazon

Audible