Reviewer's Rating:
4
4.0Overall score
I enjoyed reading this.
Guarding His Heart By Beth Laycock
Genre: Contemporary Military Romance, GLBTQ, MM
Released: October 9, 2019
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 38,000 words
He’d risk his life to find his brother. But he never expected to risk his heart as well.
Three months since his brother, Jake, went MIA, Lane Matthews is tired of waiting for answers. With a little help, he arranges a posting to Jeddah for his first overseas deployment—the perfect opportunity to find his brother.
Life in a foreign land isn’t quite like he imagined and neither are his duties. But when he meets his housemate, Tristan, while it may be memorable, it’s not one of Lane’s finest moments.
Tristan threatens to throw him way off course, and falling for the hot straight soldier is definitely not in his plans. But as tensions rise and the truth about Jake is revealed, will Lane’s heart follow orders or will all be lost like grains of sand swept away in a desert?
Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003
I enjoyed reading this.
Guarding His Heart is the first book I’ve read by Beth Laycock. I enjoyed the story for the most part but I’m having a little trouble putting my finger on why I’m reluctant to give it more than 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4). I liked the length of the story – novellas are just about my favorite length of book – but a few parts seemed a bit rushed.
Lane Matthews arranges a deployment to the last location where his brother was when he went MIA. He has two housemates, Tristan who greats him when he arrives, and Ben, who is on leave. Almost instantly Lane and Tristan are jumping into a sexual relationship and more.
I don’t usually mind insta-love but for some reason this didn’t work really well for me in this particular story. The scenes with Lane and Tristan are really hot so I pretty much overlooked the fact that the insta-love bothered me.
I felt the emotional impact of the story that I think the author was going for, so that was good. Lane really wanted to find out what happened to his brother. I think the way he went about it bothered me a bit, though. Trying to meet other British soldiers to get information about his brother just didn’t seem like a very realistic approach to me for some reason.
While the conclusion to the story came pretty quickly, I certainly wasn’t expecting what happened so that was a big plus for me. I love a good epilogue and the one for this book is pretty good. I guess I would really have liked to know what happened a little further into the future. Since Tristan was a US soldier, for me it would have been a bit more satisfying to know how they manage to stay together after their enlistments are up.
Beth Laycock appears to be a relatively new author as she only has a few books showing on Goodreads. While this story was good, I imagine her writing will continue to improve and I am certainly be willing to read more from her in the future.
♥♥♥♥
O Factor: Scorcher
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Beth Laycock’s books are influenced by her time living overseas as well as the gritty, urban landscape of the north of England where she grew up.
She has been reading romance since she was old enough to tell herself that line every book lover does—just one more chapter.
As a teenager she attempted to write her first novel, and many more since then that are still gathering dust on her bookshelf. It wasn’t until she discovered the M/M genre that her muse showed up and refused to quit telling her stories about beautiful men finding love together. She hasn’t stopped scribbling them down since. Beth’s muse usually shows up when she is in the shower, is allergic to cleaning, rarely lets Beth watch TV, and insists she drinks copious amounts of coffee so she can turn caffeine into words.
When not writing or reading Beth can be found procrastinating on social media or being dragged around the English countryside by her dog.
Beth loves to chat about books on social media or you can email her at beth@bethlaycock.com.
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