The
Guardian Angel by Liam Livings
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Blurb:
What happens when a man falls in love with
his guardian angel?
Richard Sullivan is plagued by white
feathers turning up at the oddest moments. Amy, his best friend, suggests his
guardian angel is trying to contact him, but he dismisses the idea out of hand
as nonsense.
Until, that is, he meets Sky. Six feet of
muscle in a man skirt with white feather wings.
What exactly is a guardian angel? And what
happens when your guardian angel takes leave and sends in a temp to cover? Do
you wait for a perfect boyfriend on the off chance you may be able to touch him,
to be with him, or do you grab happiness with another human? And, why the hell
has Richard’s life suddenly become so complicated?
Excerpt:
It all started on my way back from the
wrong job. I’d just turned it down because I couldn’t stand to listen to that
lot going on about sustainability this and putting bees on the roofs of houses
that. I just wanted them all to fuck off. I didn’t need their job offer. I had
a good feeling the law firm application would get me onto their graduate
scheme. I knew it. I could feel it in my water.
The law firm sent me a letter thanking me
for the application. And good luck with my other job searching.
Fuck it.
I returned to the office just west of
Liverpool Street station to do my last week of temping—my last week temping
there, after a long series of temping jobs, some of which had made me want to
jump under the train some mornings, others I could just sail through with my
brain in neutral. And now this one. Well, this one was fine.
It had been fine. At first I thought it was
quite interesting to try to do what New York City had done with its unloved,
unknown areas, and name them. Like their SoHo was the area south of Houston
Street. TriBeCa was the Triangle Below Canal Street. All this was interesting
and news to me when I’d started at the Between Town Partnership. They were
trying to make the area between the City of London, Liverpool Street, and the
West End, happen. At the moment it was a sort of nowhere between the proper
shopping of the West End and the financial district—a sort of no man’s land. No
one had reason to go there specifically, unless they worked there, as I had for
a variable three months.
I turned on my PC, went to the kitchen to
make myself an instant coffee, but not Nescafé because they were doing something
nasty about bottle-feeding in Third World countries. I had listened at the
time, a bit, but had just internally rolled my eyes. No, this was all
free-range, organic, preloved coffee. Shame it still tasted of shit, though.
I sat at my PC and noticed a white feather
next to the mouse. I picked it up, looked at it closely, noticing it was pretty
perfect as far as feathers went, and then threw it in the bin.
The morning passed without incident:
spreadsheets about the CO2 output of various buildings, some brainstorming for
this new area, and another offer of an extension to my contract.
“I’ll think about it, thanks,” I said,
folding the offer letter into my bag and leaving for lunch.
I sat on a bench in a little park. The
grass was covered in office workers, each eating their lunch and grabbing some
air and sun for a moment in their day. I pulled out the offer letter from my
bag, and another perfect white feather fell into my lap. This one was a bit
larger—as big as my index finger—and still perfectly white, still not bent or
dirty. I folded it back with the offer letter, then rang Amy at work. She’d
know what to do.
“Good morning, The Music and Video Shop,
how can I help you?”
“It’s me. How’s your morning?”
She swapped her phone voice for her proper,
slightly Welsh accent. “Busy as it goes. I can’t believe people still actually
come into a shop to buy this stuff.”
“Just be thankful they’re trying to close
down Pirate Cove. And there’s plenty of people who don’t know how to use it
anyway, playing it safe, buying DVDs and CDs from you lot.” I paused, thinking
about my morning, my situation, and the feathers; she’d want to hear about
those. “So, white feathers, what do they mean?”
Review:
I love the concept of this story. Growing up I was always
told that every person had a guardian angel. I’d love to believe that to be
true. In this story Richard actually meets his guardian angel, Sky, and they
fall in love. Now, that much you gather from the blurb. What I wasn’t expecting
is that it’s not until Richard goes through a serious life journey does the
happily ever after really begin. Richards’s story is all ups and downs. Nothing
comes easy to him. Jobs, love, his family, friends. Things fall apart royally
for him.
There are some things I feel aren’t properly addressed but
other parts are addressed and explained in ways I never thought of. So it did
balance itself out well for me. Sky is fabulous. I wish he had more book time
than he did because his love for Richard and his adorable pure, fresh outlook
on life was like a breath of fresh air.
This is a lovely story, fairly long, but very interesting
for those who wonder what it would be like to meet your guardian angel.
About
Liam Livings
Liam Livings lives where east London ends
and becomes Essex. He shares his house with his boyfriend and cat. He enjoys
baking, cooking, classic cars and socialising with friends. He escapes from
real life with a guilty pleasure book, cries at a sad, funny and camp film –
and he’s been known to watch an awful lot of Gilmore Girls in the
name of writing ‘research’.
He has written since he was a teenager,
started writing with the hope of publication in 2011. His writing focuses on
friendships, British humour, romance with plenty of sparkle.
You
can connect with Liam
Twitter @LiamLivings
Website www.liamlivings.com
Giveaway:
Win a $15 Giftcard from Amazon or ARe, plus
2 further prizes of an ebook from Liam’s catalogue. Competition closes 11th
December – midnight GMT.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I think I can say when I was younger I whole heartedly believed in guardian angels but as I got older not so much. Not sure if that's a by product of my age or that I rarely, if ever, think of those things. I would like to believe we are guided through life to stay on our path even with the bad events that happen. I mean why else would I have so many de ja vú moments?
ReplyDeleteGood question!
There are times I really do think I have one.
ReplyDeleteNot really, since many things have happened which I would hope a guardian angel would have helped prevent. *hint hint* Just in case I happen to have one, I want to suggest a better job. :)
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think that we do, which could explain why certain things happen or do not happen, even if they are not always what we want, until you look back and contemplate what happened.
ReplyDelete