Gideon
Lily Morton
[Finding Home 3]
Gideon Ramsay is so far in the closet he should be a talking faun.
A talented, mercurial, and often selfish man, Gideon has everything he should want in life. Fame, money, acting awards – he has it all. Everything but honesty. At the advice of his agent, Gideon has concealed his sexuality for years. But it’s starting to get harder to hide, and his increasingly wild behaviour is threatening to destroy his career.
Then he’s laid low by a serious illness and into his life comes Eli Jones. Eli is everything that Gideon can’t understand. He’s sunny tempered, friendly, and optimistic. Even worse, he’s unaffected by grumpiness and sarcasm, which forms ninety percent of Gideon’s body weight. And now Gideon is trapped with him without any recourse to the drugs and alcohol that have previously eased his way through awkward situations.
However, as Gideon gets to know the other man, he finds himself wildly attracted to his lazy smiles and warm, scruffy charm that seem to fill a hole inside Gideon that’s been empty for a long time. Will he give in to this incomprehensible attraction when it could mean the end of everything that he’s worked for?
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Here there be spoilers.
So much snark, so little time.
Eli is human-shaped sunshine, with thick skin and a charmingly optimistic outlook. Even better, he’s not annoying about it–too often, happy characters are conveyed as being a bit dense. Eli is far on the other end of the spectrum: sharp and snarky (when appropriate), quick-witted, yet not taking any shit.
He’s also vaguely irritating with his sunny obliviousness to bad moods. Like he’s made of mood Teflon.
He’s take-charge and almost larger than life, and I was absolutely in love with him by the end of the book.
Gideon is… none of those things–at least not on the surface. When we meet him, he’s also sharp and snarky, but his snark is less good-natured and more self-destructive and self-protecting. He’s also contrary, sometimes just for the sake of being contrary.
I subside and drag the bowl towards me sulkily. Glaring at him, I raise a spoonful to my mouth. Oh my God, it’s fucking lovely. The tartness of the yoghurt and the sweetness along with the muesli are gorgeous. Using all my acting talents, I keep my face expressionless and lower the spoon. “It’s okay,” I say grudgingly.
Only as he interacts with Eli does his sweeter, kinder side begin to emerge, but it’s charming as it does. By the end, he’s downright squishy.
The progression of the relationship between Eli and Gideon was lovely; they engage in nothing more than a (surprise) kiss while Gideon is Eli’s patient, before Eli institutes a 4-month gap in their relationship while he cares for another patient. The fact that they immediately fell into bed upon their reunion wasn’t unexpected, and the release of the sexual tension was gratifying without being gratuitous.
I also particularly enjoyed that, when things came to a peak with Frankie, Eli didn’t give Gideon an ultimatum, but promised to wait for him regardless of what Gideon told the public. It could have easily been melodramatic, but instead it was touching.
I was ambivalent about most of the supporting characters–perhaps because I read this before reading the first two books in the series, so I didn’t have the same investment as the two couples most involved with Gideon. Given they were the majority of the secondary characters (outside of Frankie, who was just as despicable as expected), this just made me more engaged with Eli and Gideon.
My only real complaint with the story itself was the epilogue. I’m not a huge fan of the neat little bow, especially if children are suddenly introduced, so I could happily have stopped reading at the end of the final chapter. There were great things in the epilogue, but the inclusion of Hetty and Gus was off-putting for me. It was nice to see how Eli and Gideon’s careers evolved, though, and the bit about having a row before having sex in their prospective new home made me laugh.
A few convoluted sentences made me blink, but overall it was an easy read with evocative language that didn’t run purple. I’m not quite sure why their clothes were described so often, though…
Ultimately, I enjoyed Eli and Gideon’s story, just not quite enough to make me have to immediately pick up and read the other books in the series.