Summary
From award-winning author Garrett Leigh comes a gorgeous new romance in the True North world! Think: great food, burly men and good times. Beards are optional but encouraged.
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.
Book Facts
Published: March 2021
Genre: MM Romance
Format: e-Arc
✨ I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review ✨
Review
This is the first Vino and Veritas book set in the True North World that I have read. I love this world so I was eager to get started.
Tanner and Jax are very likeable characters so it didn’t take long for me to get sucked into their story. The pacing of their relationship as was done well in my opinion considering all the bagged that they both brought to the relationship. We do get a bit of back story from each of them but I wold have liked more, it just felt like something was missing
There are a few side characters that pop up, Molly who works with Tanner and also Tanner’s brother Gabe and his girlfriend Eve, who also happens to be Jax’s best friend. All them brought a little something to the story.
Circling back to the comment I made about about something being missing – I feel I need to elaborate a little because this is the reason I’ve given the book 3 stars. I think the character development could have been better and more in depth. We do get told what has happened to them in the past but I don’t feel it was enough or it wasn’t done in the right way for me. I’m not sure just something didn’t sit right.
In a nutshell…
This was a bit of deep one, it has a lot of emotional intensity and less light hearted than other books set in the True North World.
My Rating: 3/5 🌟🌟🌟
About the Author
Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer, cover artist, and book designer. Her 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, and was again a finalist in 2017 with Rented Heart.
In 2017, she won the EPIC award in contemporary romance with her military novel, Between Ghosts, and the contemporary romance category in the Bisexual Book Awards with her novel What Remains.
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 photographer Dan Burgess.
Books & Other Pursuits 