Friday, September 28, 2018

Review Tour: Lucky by Garrett Leigh #review #Giveaway



Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Length: 70,000 words approx.

Cover Design: Garrett Leigh @ Black Jazz Design

Blurb

Dominic Ramos is a Premiership football player with a secret. There are no trophies for being gay in his game. Locked into his rep as the meanest defender on the pitch, keeping his secret is soul-crushing, but love has no place in his sport, even if his soft heart craves it.

Lucky Coleman is on his knees when he meets a man with more money than sense. It’s a Grindr hook-up for cash, not a love match, but dreaming of his desperate, kind eyes earns a place amongst his numerous bad habits.

Meeting once was risky, twice pushes Dom’s courage to the limit. Losing Lucky seems inevitable, but his tight grip on his image counts for nothing when Lucky starts to fall.

Catching him could cost Dom everything, but if he can set his heart free, getting Lucky long term might be a risk worth taking.


Review

So it should come as a shock to absolutely NO ONE that I am a huge Garrett Leigh fangirl. I've read everything she's written to date (some books multiple times- hello Pete and Ash <3) and while I've loved some books more than others, I've enjoyed every single one of them. I'm also a huge fan of sports romances-hockey and soccer especially- so when I saw that she was going to be writing her first sports romance, I couldn't wait to see what she would do. I expected the compelling characters, the angst, the chemistry between the main characters, but what I didn't expect was just how invested I would be in the love story between Dom and Lucky. From the very first page of Lucky I was thoroughly sucked into their lives and couldn't put the book down. 

Dominic "Dom" Ramos is a professional football (soccer to us here in the US) player and has been deep in the closet for so long he doesn't see a way out. He's miserable, has lost his love for the beautiful game, and above all else, extremely lonely. His only relief, if you can even call it that, comes from anonymous Grindr hookups. There are no connections, no intimacy, just an outlet for pent up sexual frustration. It's a hard life, one that has beaten Dom down, made him angry and apathetic to everything around him until he meets Lucky. From the very first moment they meet, Dom knows that nothing will ever be the same again. He tries to resist, he tries to keep his life the way it is, no matter how unbearably unhappy it makes him, to the point there are physical manifestations as well as making it extremely difficult for Dom to allow himself to be close to anyone. He has no friends to speak of, no family he's close to, and his teammates are more like a means to an end than anything else. I ached for Dom. Truly. I felt his fear of coming out, his anger at himself and the world around him, felt his shame for being afraid to be himself, his desperate need to feel anything. 

Lucky Coleman is exactly who Dom needs to jump start his heart and bring color into his life. Oh, Lucky isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. He's practically homeless, has erratic behavior, uses drugs when the world closes in on him, but this man who is so opposite of Dom in every way--from attitude to looks and stature--is exactly who Dom needs. I adored Lucky. His personality, though not exactly bubbly and effervescent, is full of hope. Even when things looked their darkest, Lucky still clung to the hope that things could get better. One of the things Garrett does better than almost any other author I read, is her ability to show how gritty and raw life can be sometimes. And how when faced with the realities of life, you don't always make the best decisions. Her characters are flawed, they make mistakes, they get angry and say things that hurt or are cruel ... but man, this IS life, right? Garrett's books are definitely romances, but the HEA's her characters achieve are hard fought and never easy. I appreciate the battles her characters fight, with themselves, with each other and with the outside forces around them and it makes her characters so real and so easy to relate to. 

While Lucky isn't an easy book to read, it's one that you won't be able to put down. Dom and Lucky, together and apart, are fascinating characters full of heart and emotion and yeah, there's some (or a lot depending on your viewpoint) of angst, but it's so good and really just so HOPEFUL that you'll be rooting for these two right from the get go. I loved everything about this book. The pacing was perfect, the dual point's of view (another thing Garrett excels at!) was handled with just the right touch, the characters, the emotions, the sex scenes. All of it was done in the brilliant way only an author with Garrett Leigh's immense talent can pull off. Don't let Lucky pass you by people, its a gem and you'll fall so in love with Dom and Lucky just like I did. I'm SO super excited this is a series and I can't wait to see what the next book brings!
 



September 18 - Mikku-chan, Urban Smoothie Read, Lelyana's Reviews, Gay Book Reviews, Cdawgz Reads, Gay Media Reviews, My Mind's Landscape, Dilyana's World, September 20 - Katie's Book Corner, Open Mind For A Different View, Cupcakes & Bookshelves, Megan's Media Melange, Rainbow Gold Reviews, The Blogger Girls, Bookaholic & Kindle, September 22 - Love Unchained Book Review, The Librarian's Corner, Sanaa's Book Blog, September 26 - Bonkers About Books, Making It Happen, Amy's MM Romance Reviews, Wicked Faerie's Tales & Reviews, Wicked Reads, September 28 - The Way She Reads, Reading In Sarah's Corner, My Fiction Nook, We Three Queens, Diverse Reader, MM Good Book Reviews, October 1 - Book Lovers 4Ever, Sexy Erotic Xciting, October 3 - Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Kimmers' Erotic Book Banter, Jim's Reading Room, October 5 - Mirrigold, Lillian Francis, Bayou Book Junkie, Nerdy Dirty & Flirty, Mainely Stories, SLLY 


Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer and book designer, currently working for Dreamspinner Press, Loose Id, Riptide Publishing, and Fox Love Press.

Garrett's debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards.

When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.

Garrett is also an award winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com, and co-owns the specialist stock site moonstockphotography.com with renowned LGBTQA+ photographer Dan Burgess.

Website: http://www.garrettleigh.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garrettleighauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Garrett_Leigh


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