Reviewed by Stephen K.
TITLE: Heartscape
SERIES: Vino & Veritas #2
AUTHOR: Garret Leigh
NARRATOR: Dan Calley and Michael Dean
PUBLISHER: Tantor Audio
LENGTH: 7 Hours 2 Minutes
RELEASE DATE: March 30th 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:
Two broken men find each other and with the support of their well-wishing friends and family begin to heal.
Tanner is not a people person but he finds himself the manager of the Vino and Veritas wine bar. A Vermont native who grew up exploring the outdoors with his younger brother, he left Vermont to be a mountain rescue man in Alaska. But he’s been burned out by his experiences in Alaska and has returned “home.”
Tanner’s battling debilitating bouts of depression. This is partly due to a predisposition and partly due to his experiences in Alaska. He took a tour guide position when he returned home but an incident on the trails brought his depression to a crisis level. In typical he-man style, he’s incapable of talking about his problems with anyone in any meaningful way until he’s almost too far gone. He was thrown a lifeline in the form of the bar manager job thanks to a favor called in by Eve, his brother’s girlfriend. Tanner is now “just getting by.” The job is low enough pressure that Tanner’s muddling through the worst of his depression while “herming” in the apartment that comes with the job.
Jax is a Cornish ex-pat and ex pro surfer. He’s recovering from “life wounds” of his own, including a shark attack that’s left some wounds less obvious than the marks on his skin. Jax is now working as a wildlife photographer. That’s also thanks to Eve, who he met when they were in Uni together yonks ago. When Jax finds himself in need of another helping hand after losing most of his belongings in a hostel fire, Eve arranges for Jax to use Tanner’s couch.
When the two meet, it’s kismet. These two strong silent type men are both wounded in their own ways. They are both content in their silences as they gradually grow closer and can start to trust each other enough to open up a bit.
This is the second book in the Vino & Veritas series, and it’s the fourth one that I’ve listened to. While each book CAN stand on it’s own, it’s really nice to see how these characters have come together.
This tale is told from the POV of the two men in alternating chapters and the book is narrated by Dan Calley doing chapters primarily from the POV of Jax and and Michael Dean doing chapters primarily from the POV of Tanner.
Dan Calley is a Brit and has ably narrated a number of books by Garret Leigh that I’ve previously reviewed. Michael Dean has narrated several hundred books but was new to me. Both men do able jobs with the prose and both handle the Cornish and Vermont accents well. Though the two main characters do sound different as voiced by these two guys, both are talented enough to carry it off without drawing too much attention to those differences.
Given the slow way that the two main characters come to trust each other, some readers have dinged this book for being somewhat slow paced. Listening to it, I didn’t feel that that was an issue. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am now anxious to move on to the third installment in this series.
RATING: 
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