Book: Choosing Home
Series: The Call of Home: Book 1
Publisher: Pride Publishing
Publication date: July 12, 2016
Reviewed by Morningstar
Synopsis
You can never escape from yourself.
Zac McKenzie is an ex-professional footballer with a secret he gave up his career to protect. Several years ago, he fled to his home in the North East of Scotland to avoid being outed as gay. Now, he owns a successful hotel and restaurant, but is it time to finally come out into the open?
Seth Pritchard feels he is damaged goods. He comes to Scotland to escape memories of the accident that left him injured, his bullying step-brothers and a life of lies.
For their whole lives, Zac and Seth have denied who they truly are to themselves as well as to others. When they meet, each man is forced to confront his fears and tear them down one by one.
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Review
Ahhh secrets. Those pesky things that we all keep even
though we know secrets have a way of finding the light of day when we least
want them too. If we are part of the lucky few we are allowed to work through
the reason why we are keeping them before someone else decides to out them for
us.
Zac McKenzie is an ex-footballer who retired to keep his
secret from coming out, in part for himself, but mainly for the man he loved.
He moved back home and opened his own hotel and restaurant in order to stay out
of the limelight. And it worked it’s been years and he has made his place a
success but in order to protect his secret he’s been alone all these years.
Although Zac is lonely for love and has had to work hard to get to where he is
in accepting his sexuality I feel like he is the one that has it more “put
together” than Seth. He has friends and family that love him, even though he
hasn't told his parents, but he is essentially the least broken of the two. He
stills feels a tremendous amount of guilt over how he treated his ex-wife but
that guilt, although valid, made him more likeable and human.
Set Pritchard has had a terrible time of late. He is left
broken inside and out after a long struggle in life and a recent event that
stole the part of him that had felt whole. This is the character, like usual
for me, that I connected with the most. He not only blames himself for so much
in his life, he can’t even see past how absurd some of that blame is that, he
just wants to lock himself away. His step brother and father put him through
hell and back all his life which was made worse by the fact he felt he couldn’t
tell his mother what they were doing because she was so dependent on her
husband. He suffered alone and after years of the torture and then self-recrimination
he believes that is what he deserves.
Together they help each other. Seth helps Zac see he finally
has someone to come out for, even though working through the logistics of that
is easier said than done. Zac slowly helps Seth see he needs help both
physically and mentally in order to be happy and accept who he is inside. Day
by day they talk and learn to get to know each other which allows the trust to
build in order for Seth to know that Zac isn’t there to hurt him.
I loved this story! The author created a very touching and
moving story not just about love but of acceptance of oneself and the
importance of getting the help you need, even from a professional. But I did
have one major issue with the story. Towards the end the author “told” us what
was happening when what was best for those scenes in particular was to be
“shown” them. Especially everything after Seth’s step-brother appears,
otherwise this would’ve been a five star read for me. I will definitely be
reading Alexa’s books again and glad I went on this journey with Zac and Seth.
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