Strays By Garrett Leigh, Performed by Dan Calley
Genre: Contemporary Romance, GLBTQ, MM
Released: Audio-August 7, 2020; eBook-March 19, 2019
Publisher: Fox Love Press
Series: Urban Soul, Book 2
Length: 6 hrs, 34 min / 268 pages
Cover Design: Garrett Leigh @ Black Jazz Design
Work, sleep, work, repeat. Nero’s lonely life suits him just fine until his best friend, Cass, asks him to take on a new apprentice—a beautiful young man who’s never set foot in a professional kitchen. Despite his irritation and his lifelong ability to shut the world out, Nero is mesmerised by the vibrant stray, especially when he learns what drove him to seek sanctuary on Nero’s battered old couch.
Lenny Mitchell is living under a cloud of fear. Pursued by a stalker, he has nowhere left to run until Nero offers him a port in a storm—a job at the hottest restaurant in Shepherd’s Bush. Kitchen life proves heady and addictive, and it’s not long before he finds himself falling hard and fast for the man who has taken him in.
Fast-forward a month and a neither man can imagine life without the other, but one thing stands in their way: a lifetime of horrors Nero can’t bring himself to share with Lenny. Or can he? For the first time ever, happiness is there for the taking, and Nero must learn to embrace it before fate steps in and rips it away.
Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003
Gritty and touching; a great love story!
While Strays is part of the Urban Soul series, it can be read as a standalone with no problem. I’m sorry to say that I haven’t read book one yet, but I didn’t feel like I missed anything by listening to this one on its own.
Dan Calley’s voice is so nice and mellow and very easy to listen to. As with one other book I listened to recently, I did have just a bit of trouble differentiating between the MC’s voices but the way the dialogue was written it wasn’t difficult to know who was speaking. I’m pretty sure part of the problem is me – Midwest US gal listening to a great narrator with a strong London (I’m told that’s what it is) accent. In any case, I still loved listening to this one.
Parts of this story just about broke my heart. Lenny is running from a stalker and he’s given refuge within the Urban Soul group of restaurants – specifically he’s going to work with Nero at Pippa’s. As with most of Garrett Leigh’s books that I’ve read lately, this one is very British and helped to expand my vocabulary of Brit words and slang. 
Nero is having a difficult time opening up to Lenny and it causes problems in their relationship; Lenny can’t stand the silence between them. But once Nero opens up and tells him everything it just about breaks Lenny’s heart. Then, just when it seems like everything is going to work out fine for Lenny and Nero, a twist is thrown into the works.
Fantastic stories like Strays is why I’ve become a huge fan of Garrett Leigh’s writing.
Story: ♥♥♥♥
Narration: ♥♥♥♥♥
O Factor: Scorcher
Available to borrow with Kindle Unlimited.
Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer and book designer.
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.
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