Title: The River Leith Main Characters: Leith & Zachariah Author: Leta Blake Genre: Contemporary Romance, Sports Length: 173 pages Publisher: Leta Blake Books Date of Publication: May 15th 2014 Story: Memory is everything. After an injury in the ring, amateur boxer Leith Wenz wakes to discover his most recent memories are three years out of date. Unmoored and struggling to face his new reality, Leith must cope anew with painful revelations about his family. His brother is there to support him, but it’s the unfamiliar face of Zach, a man introduced as his best friend, that provides the calm he craves. Until Zach’s presence begins to stir up feelings Leith can’t explain. For Zach, being forgotten by his lover is excruciating. He carefully hides the truth from Leith to protect them both from additional pain. His bottled-up turmoil finds release through vlogging, where he confesses his fears and grief to the faceless Internet. But after Leith begins to open up to him, Zach's choices may come back to haunt him. Ultimately, Leith must ask his heart the questions memory can no longer answer. Me and this book: This was actually the first time I’m reading a MM book that circled around the amnesia theme. Why? I don’t know. But I am experienced in reading about the theme in the fanfiction world so I was kind of ecstatic to see the difference between a professional book author and an amateur fanfiction author. And alongside that, the thrill of the anticipating angst in the story was my little own guilty pleasure. Review: This started off days after Leith woke up in the hospital, confused and shocked knowing that he had just lost the last three years of memory from his head. An illegal blow to the back of the head during a boxing match sent Leith back to where he was three years ago, well at least in memory, where he was just fresh out of prison serving time for participating in an illegal underground fight. Bombarded with the news of his amnesia, Leith struggled to keep up with everything that has happened and was happening at the moment. News of his father’s death and his supposed future made him agitated and angry causing him to lash out without meaning to. But what was hardest to accept were the people Leith had met throughout those lost years. Roommates and friends that he couldn’t remember, meeting them all over again at his hospital room was awkward and unsettling for him knowing that they knew all about him while he didn’t know one thing about them. And day after day, he thought that he was somehow getting the hang of it, not until his brother, Arthur, introduced him to his so called ‘bestfriend’ named Zach. Zach on the other hand was more than a bestfriend but Leith didn’t know that, he couldn’t, at least not yet. Not yet when Zach himself couldn’t even push himself to even see Leith without breaking down, without throwing himself on Zach and demanding him to remember. Knowing that the love of his life couldn’t even remember his name was the most heartbreaking thing. And to think that all their memories, all their past was erased in a flash left Zach alone, scared and lost, so lost that he couldn’t even imagine to try and move on from what had happened. He didn’t know what to do, I mean, who would in a situation like that? From the start, we knew that this book was going to be a tearjerker. And it was. Zach’s vlog entries on his youtube were emotional and full of pain that the readers would feel exactly what Zach was going through. The pain and suffering was explained in a way that it was so raw and having Zach himself tell us all that was sometimes too much to bear. For Leith though, seeing him get confused about how he feels about Zach was frustrating because the readers knew the reason why but couldn’t do anything about it. All we could do was wait and see what happens next. Despite the pending angst and sadness, it was all actually well spread throughout the entire book that it wasn’t too much to read. The drama was heavy, definitely, but it was needed. Both MCs were in pain and reading how they managed and how they overcame them was fulfilling. Though personally, I thought the ‘reconcile’ part near the climatic end was too abrupt, I wanted more from it, a few more drama to finish off the book somehow. The epilogue part was also a little too “happy” for my taste. Not that I wanted the MCs to suffer more but I wanted them to be more realistic. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed in this book, it was everything I ever imagined for an amnesia themed book and more. Hoping to find more books like this in the future. |
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February 2016
"Without a doubt, there was no place, nothing as exotic or rare, as that moment right there with him. Never again could I claim miracles didn't happen." |