Lucky by Garrett Leigh

Title: Lucky

Author: Garrett Leigh

Genre: Contemporary, Sports

Length: Novel (282 pages)

Publisher: Fox Love Press (18 Sept 18)

Heat Level: Explicit

Heart Rating: 💖💖💖💖 3.5 Hearts

Blurb: Dominic Ramos is a Premiership football player with a secret. There are no trophies for being gay in his game. Locked into his rep as the meanest defender on the pitch, keeping his secret is soul-crushing, but love has no place in his sport, even if his soft heart craves it.

Lucky Coleman is on his knees when he meets a man with more money than sense. It’s a Grindr hook-up for cash, not a love match, but dreaming of his desperate, kind eyes earns a place amongst his numerous bad habits.

Meeting once was risky, twice pushes Dom’s courage to the limit. Losing Lucky seems inevitable, but his tight grip on his image counts for nothing when Lucky starts to fall.

Catching him could cost Dom everything, but if he can set his heart free, getting Lucky long term might be a risk worth taking.

ISBN: B07H55CFYB

Product Link: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Reviewer: Prime

Review: I’m going to be up front about this book – while I enjoyed the book and the concept I didn’t find myself wowed by it either. For me, Garrett Leigh is a new author. I enjoyed her writing style and thoroughly enjoyed reading the book from start to finish. However, once more I am brought back to the fact that I wasn’t completely blown away by the story, which has ultimately left me a little disappointed.

The main characters of this story are Dominic Ramos and Lucky Coleman. They are both very interesting characters and vastly different personalities, heavily influenced by the very different paths their lives are on before their meeting.

When they meet, it was never meant to be more than a Grindr hookup, which Lucky desperate to make money. He often sleeps rough on the street or in shelters, or if he’s desperate he will crash at his best friend’s place. Despite what he is forced to do, Lucky is a strong man and has a very defined moral compass. In this way he was so easy to relate to and it was so easy to feel for him more so than for Dominic.

Dominic is thoroughly buried in the closet. Dom is a professional football (soccer) player in England’s Premier League and he knows that he can’t have his career as the league’s most feared defender and come out of the closet. And so he is stuck to a life of stolen blowjobs and hook ups.

Now I think this is where my not being totally blown away by this book stems from: I will grant you, there is definitely some drama and some low-level angst. However, for me a book like this could have the potential to be completely over the top, which could be both good or bad. The good thing about the low-level angst and drama is that it makes both Dom and Lucky so very relatable – they are ordinary blokes. The bad thing is that this is a long book without any great drama to overcome. Which brings me back to the good point that these are just two guys getting to know each other and somehow along the way falling in love.

And that, my friends, is the problem that I am stuck with in my head as I try to give this a proper and sincere review.

Anyone who loves a sweet romance that is just a tad Pretty Woman will love to read Lucky. I’m still undecided if I will read the next story in the series – there is an excerpt for the character Cash who we had met all too briefly.