Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Love can slip through the smallest crack in the door.

While most of his friends have moved on to “real” careers, Jon Buchanan is content skating through life as a part-time waiter and gay porn star. Firmly single thanks to a previous relationship disaster, he focuses his spare time on Henry, a dear friend dying of cancer. And with Henry’s happiness paramount, Jon is on a mission to help Henry meet his recently discovered grandson.

Isaac Gregory hasn’t set foot outside for the past year. He has everything he needs delivered, and his remaining family knows better than to visit. When a complete stranger shows up claiming to be his grandfather—with a distractingly handsome younger man in tow—his carefully structured routines are shaken.

Despite his instant attraction, Jon senses Isaac is too fragile for a relationship. Yet tentative friendship grows into genuine companionship. And when Henry’s health begins to fail, they realize Fate brought them together for a reason.

First Edition published by Samhain Publishing, 2016.

Book Review

I was so excited to begin 'The Heart As He Hears It', the third book in A.M. Arthur's 'Perspectives' series. I loved the first two books and having met Jon previously I really wanted to know his story. Even more I wanted him to find the love his best friend Gabe found with Tristan, and to find someone who loved him for exactly who he was.

Existence wasn’t enough anymore. Isaac stared at the stumbling kitten, startled by the realization that his carefully structured life wasn’t saving him. It was confining him. Protecting him from harm, yes, but also restraining him from people like Henry and Jon. Two people he did want to get to know better. He wanted to live. And he could start by rescuing a tiny kitten.

Jon was kicked out of his parents’ home at eighteen for being gay. Through his oldest sister and a friend of a friend, he met Henry and lived on his couch for years. Henry helped him get his feet under him and was there when Jon's mentally abusive relationship led him to anorexia. Henry is the father Jon never had and now he's dying of cancer. So when Henry tells him he just found out he had a son who was murdered but left a wife and child, Jon instantly agrees to take Henry to meet the family he never knew. That's how he meets Isaac, Henry's grandson, who is partially deaf and suffers from severe agoraphobia.

Isaac had a miserable childhood due to his father's alcoholism, extreme temper, and severe physical abuse. In fact, that's how Isaac ended up partially deaf after his father slammed him into a wall when he was a child. After his father was murdered, his mother couldn't handle her depression and ended up killing herself, leaving Isaac to grow up with his grandparents. He loved his grandparents but now they're both gone, too, and he's alone. He has extended family on his mom's side but Isaac knows that alone is how you stay safe, and staying in the house is how you remain alive.

Jon’s hand in his made his body hum with joy as much as it made him want to cry. Isaac had made a connection. An actual, real connection with another human being unlike anything he’d had with his family. This ran deeper, past his fear and his walls and into his soul. This was something he could trust.

It may have been Bear, the kitten, that started Isaac and Jon's friendship, but it's the similarities in what they both struggle with that deepens the friendship and allows them both to begin to heal. Slowly. Very slowly. Their friendship slowly becomes more with both of them inching their way into intimacy of any kind. Unfortunately, someone in Jon's life doesn't want to let him go, and it's going to take both of them, and their newfound love, to survive.

An excellent finale to a mind-blowing series. I can't thank the author enough for the beauty of her words.

 

 

 

 

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Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 280 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	13-March-2017
Price	$4.99 ebook
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Heart-As-He-Hears-Perspectives-ebook/dp/B06XKR9WXR