Mirrigold: Mutterings & Musings

Hiding Place by Jackie Keswick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another really love read from Jackie.

She has such a clever way of drawing you into a story by slowly revealing little snippets of story, or growth in feelings, without ever bashing the reader over the head with lots of exposition.

Her use of emotions through the language and dialogue choices she makes also give you a real sense of what both Robert and Zach have been through and the traumas they’ve had to deal with

You get all the feels with this one, grief, anger, loss, pain, hope, love and the dawning of a bright new future full of healing.

Zach is a real sweetheart. From the start we get a sense of this still relatively young man who has been dealt a blow that could have levelled a lesser man.

Not only did he lose his two best friends, but the career they’d built together as successful musicians and he’s temporarily distanced (albeit because he’s dealing with too much grief) from the only family he’d known in Noel and Ricky’s parents.

Robert’s a harder win, though he will ultimately steal your heart too when you find out all his secrets. He blows hot and cold with Zach but comes through big time as the story develops and through the way he offers comfort and support.

The murder mystery element is intriguing, there’s not much given away until the very end and it felt like a believable and satisfying conclusion to me.

And, with a Northumbrian setting that feels very familiar to me as all my childhood holidays were spent in and around Alnwick, the whole book delivers.

My only reason for it not being a 5* review is that I personally prefer to have a little more heat taking place on page, although Jackie does deliver on the physical relationship between them, it’s not overly detailed and there are elements of fade to black in some places.

Overall though this book provides a beautiful relationship with two people who perfectly suit each other and who you know will grow happily grey sitting in the Pele Tower and watching the sun set over the beautiful countryside.

#ARC kindly received from the author in return for an honest and unbiased review

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