Reviewed by Valerie

TITLE:  Heartscape

SERIES:  Vino & Veritas #2

AUTHOR:  Garrett Leigh

PUBLISHER:  Heart Eyes Press

LENGTH:  240 pages

RELEASE DATE:  March 22, 2021

BLURB:

I’m not the obvious choice to run Burlington’s coolest wine bar—quiet, brooding, clueless about tannin content, and always one wrong turn away from another downward spiral.

But no one seems to mind that I’m a wreck. Besides me. I just focus on getting through each shift until the night a beautiful stranger appears, looking as lost and damaged as I feel.

When a mutual friend calls in a favor, the sexy newcomer winds up crashing on my couch. I don’t know if it’s his melodic Cornish accent, or his ocean blue eyes, or the rock-hard body with the mysterious scars, but I get the feeling whatever happened to him runs far deeper than those wounds.

Having Jax in my home makes my chest warm. Makes me shiver. Makes me want more. But I’ve got a pile of baggage and I don’t want to be a burden on anyone let alone a man who seems to have enough demons of his own.

Our chemistry is off the charts. His arms feel like home. The last thing I want is to screw this up. Is it wrong to hope we can heal each other? Or will one of us die trying?

HEARTSCAPE is a heartfelt MM friends-to-lovers romance in the True North world, with a brooding bartender, a rugged outdoorsman, sweet angst and lots of Shipley cider. Triggers: contains mentions of depression, suicidal ideation and PTSD recovery.

REVIEW:

Heartscape, the second book of the Vino & Veritas series, is a terrific hurt/comfort book by Garrett Leigh. Her two leading men are seriously broken but ready to put the pieces of themselves back together to become whole and ready to be with each other.

A manager of a wine bar who, admittedly, knows nothing about wine: that’s Tanner, who was briefly introduced in Featherbed as a down-on-his-luck man being given a big opportunity to run the bar side of Vino & Veritas in Burlington, Vermont. Even though he lacks the experience, he was recommended by the owner’s boyfriend whom he went to high school with. Tanner is broody and intense. Peopling is not his forte so interactions are mostly limited to bar employees and patrons, his brother Gabi, and his brother’s girlfriend, Eve.

The hostel across the street from V and V goes up in flames one night, and among the curious onlookers and displaced hostel guests, Tanner finds himself staring at a despondent man crouched on the ground. Soon after, Tanner receives a call from Eve – a college friend of hers is now homeless due to the fire. Can Tanner take him in for the night? Not a hardship for Tanner considering Eve’s friend is the gorgeous guy he’s been watching.

Jax hails from England but was most recently living in California. He was a pro surfer before being sidelined by a career-ending – and nearly life-ending – injury. Afterwards, he escaped a terribly abusive marriage and landed in Burlington. Now he’s a videographer hiking through the wilderness in search of an elusive species his boss at an adventure company wants captured on film.

So Jax, having lost most of his belongings in the fire, ends up sleeping on Tanner’s couch, wearing his clothes, and eating his food. The men seem immediately comfortable with each other even if they don’t speak much. One night turns into one more, then stretches into a week. And soon it’s not the couch Jax is occupying, it’s Tanner’s bed. They work opposite schedules and aren’t able to spend much time with each other but they enjoy their nights in each other’s arms. Both men know, though, that they need to nurture what they have and take it slowly if they have a hope of it lasting. They need to learn to share the secrets of their pasts so the emotional walls between them can crumble.

The attraction between the men is immediate. I wanted these guys to hookup as soon as they laid eyes on one another. Their strong chemistry smolders off the page. Tanner, in particular, has an uncanny connection to Jax and he can sense his presence nearby without seeing him first. It’s a quaint touch.

I like that Ms. Leigh brought her British roots to America and made Jax British (or Cornish, as he likes to differentiate). As an Anglophile, I’m amused by the Briticisms that pepper the author’s work.

The most significant side characters are Gabi and Eve. Tanner and Gabi have a complicated relationship due to Tanner’s troubled past. They love each other dearly and it’s nice to see their growth together. There were brief mentions of Finn, Harrison, and Audrey from the first book in the series, Featherbed, but there was no on-page interaction. I wouldn’t expect there to be since they’re another author’s characters, but even the quick references and the continuity they bring were enjoyable. In Featherbed, Annabeth Albert set the scene for Burlington, and Ms. Leigh does a superb job of world building to further ensconce her readers in the small, charming city and the Vermont wilderness.

The epilogue is set six months into the future and provides a very satisfying ending. Tanner and Jax understand they can’t fix each other but they can give each other the will to fix themselves.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon

Heart Eyes Press