New Release Review: The Lost Boy by Anna Martin #Review #Giveaway

Title: The Lost Boy
Author: Anna Martin
Self Published
Publication date: January 19, 2020
Length: 264 pages

Reviewed by Sammy


Synopsis

Five years after his band Ares shot to success, Ben Easton is struggling. He’s holed up in a mansion in Los Angeles while he fights depression and a dark drug addiction that threatens to destroy everything. In a final attempt to save Ben’s life, his best friend Tone does something desperate—he calls Ben’s ex-boyfriend Stan and begs him to help.

Stan Novikov is living in New York and thriving in his career as a fashion journalist. He hasn’t been back to London since he and Ben broke up, but that seems like the right place to go—along with Tone—to try and shock Ben out of his unhealthy lifestyle.

The band have to finish their album before Christmas but without Ben, work has stalled. Ben has to decide whether he’s going to stay with Ares and keep making music, or find another path for his future. One that might just include Stan.

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Review

Ben is fairly sure that he has hit rock bottom and maybe even fallen further but then again he’s so drugged up and miserable he can’t be sure of anything. A few years have passed since he’s even seen Stan—losing the one thing he loved when he couldn’t give up the drugs for him was the beginning of the end. Now with the band’s fourth album looming and the pressure for Ben to pull it together to finish the work, he’s so far gone he isn’t even really aware that his best friend Tone has found the only person that might possibly break through Ben’s self-destructive loop. Stan is back—in LA—and ready to help. He starts by taking Ben home—back to London—where maybe, just maybe Ben can begin to heal and shake off the demons that hold him and the drugs that are killing him.

With the release of The Lost Boy, Anna Martin reunites Stan, Ben and the bandmates from Ares. But the band that was on the cusp of greatness is greatly changed, wildly successful and ready to implode. Ben has been eating drugs like candy for nearly three years—since right before Stan walked out of his life. In that time, albums have dropped and the band has toured the world. Most of the time, Ben has self-medicated and handled the stress of his star rising with nearly every narcotic he can get his hands on. As always, Tone is there to pick him up and try to keep him together but Ben is in too deep for Tone or any of the band to help him anymore. So Tone brings in Stan thinking that somehow he may be able to reach Ben and slowly but surely it works.

In this second chance novel, Stan may be a catalyst for Ben to get sober but it will really come down to the fact that Ben decides he really doesn’t want to die. I loved how the author makes it clear that Ben was trying to kick the drugs for himself first, and Stan and the band second. The beginning of this novel is an ugly mess—gearing the reader up for a potentially not so happy ending for Ben and Stan. During the story, Ben will relapse more than once and have to try and dig deep for self-love—the key to real healing. Through it all, Stan will be the most loyal and loving friend—something Ben really needed. The love they once had will spark again but it’s a long road to a happy ever after and there will be a lot of pain and gut-wrenching confessions along the way.

But there is also love…and healing…and hard work to remain sober and strong and that is what this novel is really all about. The Lost Boy is an anthem to anyone who has ever struggled with addiction and self-loathing guilt. It is a tender embrace for those who stand beside the addict they love and relearn how to trust them again—to let them back behind the wall they have built around their heart and be willing to be hurt again, if necessary, to see the one they hold so dear recover. It is a beautiful love song full of hope and courage and finding a home together again.

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Release Day: The Impossible Boy by Anna Martin Re-release!! #Review #Giveaway

Title: The Impossible Boy
Re-release
Author: Anna Martin
Release date: January 5, 2020
Self-Published
Length: 219 pages

Reviewed by Sammy


Synopsis

This is not your average love story.

Ben Easton is not your average romantic hero. He’s a tattooed, badass, guitarist in a band, working in a perfectly horrible dive bar in Camden Town. His life is good, and he’s totally unprepared for how one man will turn it upside down.

Stan isn’t your average heroine. As a gender-fluid man, he proudly wears his blond hair long, his heels sky-high, and his makeup perfectly executed. A fashion industry prodigy, Stan is in London after stints working in Italy and New York City, and he quickly falls for Ben’s devil-may-care attitude and the warm, soft heart Ben hides behind it.

Beneath the perfect, elegant exterior, Stan has plenty of scars from teenage battles with anorexia. And it only takes the slightest slip for his demons to rush back in while Ben is away touring with his band, Ares. With Ares on the brink of a breakthrough, Ben is forced to find a way to balance the opportunity of a lifetime with caring for his beautiful, impossible boyfriend.

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Review

Ben didn’t mind working two jobs but the guitar and his band, Ares, was where his real passion lay. He just knew that they could be good enough to make it someday if their crazy schedules ever intersected enough to help them break into the big time. Till then he tended bar and tutored students and managed to sleep—a little bit. When the striking beauty walked into the bar Ben nearly tripped over himself to serve him. Though definitely feminine in many ways, Stan was all boy and liked it that way. Being gender fluid fit how he felt inside and when he saw the gorgeous bartender’s eyes light up he knew that somehow he would like to get to know the guy. A phone number scrawled on a napkin and a few days later, Ben and Stan go on their first date and slowly from there they begin to explore each other and the growing feelings they have. But Stan’s past is one fraught with demons including his battle with anorexia. Will Ben still want him when he discovers just how messed up Stan’s head really is?

Anna Martin offers up a very brave look at a man who lives with the disease of anorexia and has come to terms with his gender-fluidity in the re-release of her novel, The Impossible Boy. Stan had toyed in the past with hormone therapy but realized two things—one that the weight increase the drugs would make him undergo would drive him back into the throes of an illness he is managing to keep in check, and, more importantly, he liked being a man sometimes. So with his beautiful long hair and makeup that allows him to feel feminine and in control, Stan decides each day just how feminine he will be. It really comes down to how he feels at any given moment and that’s the way he likes it—as does Ben.

Ben’s character not only accepts Stan’s style and fluidity but embraces it with love and support. Honestly this character could not have been nicer and his obvious care for Stan drives this story and shapes it into a beautiful romance that is lovely to read. Stan is so aware of how lucky he is to have found Ben and up until the band really begins to take off things seem good—Stan is super busy at his fashion job but still he and Ben find time for each other and life appears to be heading in the right direction for both of them. It’s when Ben must travel to gigs that the road becomes just a little less smooth and Stan slowly falls apart.

One of the things The Impossible Boy focuses on is the fact that like any other disease, anorexia is never really cured—rather the person afflicted with it learns how to manage it—control the urges to diet or simply stop eating altogether. The story then adds the layer of being a gender-fluid person which as we know is often difficult to be in today’s society. As Stan aptly explains he is not transgender and so doesn’t fit in the public’s scheme of “oh, you aren’t physically the sex you know you should have been born into? Well, then, we can fix you” mold. Instead he has more feminine days and less feminine days and Ben takes that all in stride and absolutely loves him for it. Add to that the battle with anorexia and you have an emotionally charged novel that grapples with some very big issues affecting so many in this world of ours.

The Impossible Boy is a beautiful romance, an ongoing battle to feel whole and in control and a fierce reminder that those who struggle with illness must take each day as it comes and accept the help of friends and loved ones if they are to make it through. I really look forward to the sequel to this book which will release later this month.

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Review Tour: Something Wild by Anna Martin #Review #Giveaway

Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Universal Link

Length: 67,000 words

Cover Design: Alexandria Corza

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Blurb

The South Pacific Archipelago is home to a tiny island community of around three hundred scientists… and twenty thousand dinosaurs. As a paleogeneticist, Kit Sterling leads a team studying the dinosaurs to unlock the unanswered questions of evolution.

But there is something more dangerous than dinosaurs on the islands.

Head ranger Logan Beck discovers evidence of poachers, while rumors of a black market for dinosaur leather swirl around the community. Kit and Logan haven’t always gotten along professionally, though that has nothing to do with their attraction to each other. So when they’re thrown together to save an injured infant dinosaur, their professional disdain turns into a clandestine romance.

With not just the injured dinosaur at risk, but all of the precious dinosaurs on the islands too, Kit and Logan have to figure out how to balance their budding romance without letting their careers go extinct.

Review 

Logan takes his job of head ranger very seriously particularly since it entails watching after the last living dinosaurs on earth. Keeping them safe, unexploited and their habitat unaffected by the encroaching world seems like something simple given they are contained on a fairly isolated archipelago but nothing could be farther from the truth. Supposedly dinosaur leather has hit the black market for sale and getting his hands on a piece of it for his colleague Kit Sterling to test has been less than successful. But what if someone is poaching the dinosaurs for their skin? How can Logan and his understaffed group of rangers ever manage to catch them in action and prove to his corporate minded supervisor that the threat to the dino population is very real?

Kit Sterling may often not agree with everything Logan Beck says but one thing they agree on completely is safeguarding the rare and beautiful animals they have been given to study. Kit is a lab rat and very good at what he does. He never goes into the field unlike Logan and that is where most of their arguments stem from—the lack of understanding that Logan’s job is just as important as Kit’s research. When Logan brings back an injured baby dinosaur and enlists Kit’s help in raising it, the two become closer than either ever expected and constant bickering morphs into mutual attraction. But something isn’t quite right and Kit is determined to help Logan save the dinosaurs before it’s too late.

Anna Martin has released an interesting mystery/romance novel called Something Wild which features new and unusual breeds of living dinosaurs. While many have their hereditary roots in the dinos you and I grew up reading about, the author has given them a whole new look and behaviors which produced some really sweet creatures—the best being the dissimosaur. In all honesty it’s little Dizzy, the rescued infant dinosaur that Logan brings home to rehabilitate, that steals this novel. Once you are able to suspend your disbelief that these creatures could still roam the earth the story becomes very interesting. Reading about how Logan interacts with them, the danger some represent and the idea that poachers could be killing them certainly captured my interest.

Unfortunately that interest didn’t extend to all aspects of the novel. Whether it was due to only hearing about how much Kit and Logan argued or the lack of relationship building in the novel itself, I had a difficult time feeling any connection between Kit and Logan. One moment Logan is asking Kit if he ever wants to have kids and admitting he doesn’t give the reality of the idea much thought to the two professing their love for each other. And there is the real crux of the main problem in this story. It often felt incredibly disjointed—as if pieces of the story were either in the wrong place in the timeline or just thrown in for the sake of building conflict or drama. In particular the last third of this novel seemed to exist just to finally move the plot on to focus on the mystery element that was broadly hinted at but never really addressed in the first two thirds of the story.

Something Wild had all the pieces in place to be an entertaining mystery with a side dish of romance thrown in. But instead I felt I got a tepid attraction between the two main characters and a rather oversimplified resolution to the larger issue that threatened the dinosaurs. Mostly though my real problem with this story was the idea that major plot pieces were often “told” to us rather than shown. This meant that many opportunities to flesh out characters and/or the storyline itself never happened leaving me with a feeling that I had missed something along the way. Please know I love this author and have enjoyed many really great books by her but this one fell short of her usual superior storytelling abilities.

Author Bio

Anna Martin is from a picturesque seaside village in the southwest of England and now lives in the Bristol, a city that embraces her love for the arts. After spending most of her childhood making up stories, she studied English literature at university before attempting to turn her hand as a professional writer.

Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theater (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), going to visit friends in other countries, and reading anything thatís put under her nose.

Anna claims her entire career is due to the love, support, prereading, and creative ass kicking provided by her best friend Jennifer. Jennifer refuses to accept responsibility for anything Anna has written.

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