Any Given Lifetime by Leta Blake

Narrated by John Solo

Leta Blake’s Any Given Lifetime has been on my radar for a while, and I even have the ebook – but I haven’t managed to read it yet, so I eagerly pounced on the new audio version. I knew, based on the synopsis, that it was likely to be an unusual and emotional listen, and it certainly was; it’s one of the most affecting and unique romances I’ve ever come across.

The book opens in January 2012, and we meet twenty-two year old Joshua Stouder who, just a month earlier, lost the man he loved when he was killed in a road accident. Joshua has just found out that Neil has left him a massive fortune and a position at the head of the board of the Neil Russell Foundation for Advanced Nanite Research, the company he’d requested be set up after his death to continue his research into new medical technology. Joshua had had no idea how wealthy Neil really was; they had been together for only nine months before Neil was killed and were very much in love, even though they hadn’t even had a physical relationship (something Joshua now bitterly regrets and blames on his conservative upbringing, terming himself a skittish country boy stewing in internalised homophobia).

In the very same month, in Atlanta, Georgia, Alice Green, an army widow recently remarried to her late husband’s best friend, gives birth to a healthy baby boy. Even though she and her new husband had settled on the name Joseph for the baby, Alice is strangely compelled to give him a completely different name. Neil.

It’s not a spoiler to say that Neil Russell’s spirit, his essence, has been reincarnated into Neil Green (it’s in the synopsis) or that he’s been reborn with all the memories of his old life completely intact. His mother senses from very early on that her son is ‘different’, like a strange, abrasive little professor trapped in the body of a tiny child. He graduates from university at fifteen and by the age of twenty has earned both his MD and PhD and is single-mindedly focused on medical research into the nanite technology (microscopic robots that can work medical miracles) he was starting to develop in his previous lifetime. When Neil is seven, he tells Alice who he is and how he died, and about Joshua – and to her credit she doesn’t freak out. She’s seen enough of his preternatural intelligence and has long since realised that he doesn’t speak act or think like a child of his age for what he says to make more sense to her than not.

And while we watch Neil grow up, we watch Joshua as he moves on with his life, falling in love with and eventually marrying Lee Fargo, whom he meets, ironically, because of his Neil. Joshua has been thanked a number of times over the years by people who were the recipients of Neil’s organs – and it’s how he meets Lee, who was very badly burned in a house fire and needed several skin grafts. Lee’s a great guy who respects Neil’s place in Joshua’s life, and they’re very happy together until Lee’s death some fifteen years later.

The events of the story take place partly in the past and partly in the near future, and for the first part of the book, the structure is not linear as we move back and forth, spending time with Neil growing up, looking back on Neil and Joshua’s time together, and watching Joshua fully embrace the second chance he’s been given with Lee. That might not suit everyone, but I liked it and it works very well, offering a series of ‘moments in time’ in both Neil’s and Joshua’s lives.

Any Given Lifetime is an extraordinary story of love and loss, and grief and hope and second chances. The leads and secondary characters are likeable and well-developed, but Neil is the standout – he’s a real force of nature. He’s a cantankerous, prickly, arrogant, brusque genius with no brain-to-mouth filter, but beneath it all is a caring, generous soul he never reveals to anyone (in this he reminded me of Patrick in the Wake up Married series). Joshua, on the other hand, isn’t ‘flashy’ or larger-than-life; he’s quiet and considered and has a large capacity for love.

There are a handful of great secondary characters in the story. Aside from Lee, I loved Alice, Neil’s mother, and the way she loved and supported her odd little boy so unreservedly, and I liked Neil’s roomie, Derek, who was the only other person to whom Neil told the truth about himself and about Joshua.

I was waiting throughout the story, for the moment when Neil and Joshua meet again, and the author doesn’t disappoint. Listening to Neil realise he can’t possibly devastate Joshua all over again by telling him the truth but that he also has no idea how to let him go, and then hearing Joshua vacillate between grief, hope and disbelief is utterly heart-breaking.

I’ve listened to John Solo a few times, and although he’s a very good narrator, he has one particular vocal tick that irritates me, which is his tendency to deliver certain words or lines in a manner that feels very exaggerated. (I call it his “movie trailer announcer guy” mode!) Fortunately however, he doesn’t do it all the time, and I think that here, I was so completely caught up in the story that I didn’t notice it as much as I might have done, and in every other way, his performance is superb. Mr. Solo has a pleasantly husky voice; both narrative and dialogue are well paced, his character differentiation is excellent and he’s able to portray female characters convincingly through a slight change in pitch and timbre. He does a great job with his interpretation of Neil, expertly conveying his impatience and outspokenness and somehow putting all his frustration and seemingly boundless energy into his voice. Also impressive is Mr. Solo’s ability to communicate the myriad of emotions present in the story, grief and longing, love and joy, exhilaration and despair, and his performance really brought the characters and the story to rich, vibrant life.

Any Given Lifetime is something a bit different and, I think, a bit special. With a touch of sci-fi in the form of the fictional nanites and a smidgeon of fantasy in the reincarnation plotline, it’s most of all a beautifully written, epic romance about a love so strong it endures for more than a lifetime.

“Joshua, you’re my everything. I’ll find you in any given lifetime. Never forget that.”

“Neil,” Joshua started, overwhelmed by the truth. Sometimes it still hit him hard, all over again. Neil had come back for him. He’d loved him that much.

Make sure you’ve got a few tissues handy before you jump into this one. Just in case.

Caz

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Buy Any Given Lifetime by Leta Blake on Amazon