Gideon by Lily Morton

Gideon by Lily Morton

Narrated by Joel Leslie

I enjoyed Oz earlier this year very much, so I was happy to return to the Finding Home series with Gideon. I have the second book, Milo, on my TBL as well but it’s not necessary to have read it to enjoy Gideon. In fact, there may be some advantages to not doing so as I gather Gideon wasn’t always on his best behaviour in the earlier book.

Gideon is Milo’s older brother. He was 12 when Milo was born. Their parents favoured Milo and packed Gideon off to boarding school. As a child therefore, Gideon was very resentful of Milo but that changed over time. Gideon still has a tense and distant relationship with his parents, but he values his brother greatly. Due to events in Milo’s own book, there has been some strain on their relationship but at heart the brothers love each other deeply.

Gideon was discovered by an agent when he was in a school play at age 17 and has since found fame and fortune as an actor. His agent, Frankie, has a huge influence on him and has convinced him it would be career suicide to come out as gay. As a result, Gideon is a very unhappy man and when the book begins, he is deeply closeted and often drunk or high. He is also recovering from a bad flu and not looking after himself very well, so he develops pneumonia which lands him in the ICU and results in profound changes in his life.

Milo arranges for Gideon to travel on a cruise ship from Italy where he was hospitalised, to England, where he will go to Milo and Niall and Silas and Oz to spend time recovering his strength on Silas’s estate in Cornwall. Frankie hires a nurse to look after Gideon on the ship and this is where Eli joins the action.

He is a private nurse and has a fairly lucrative career providing nursing assistance to the wealthy. Openly gay, he is immediately attracted to Gideon (the attraction is very mutual) but as he is providing medical care to Gideon, it’s not appropriate for them to start anything. There is a brief kiss and makeout session while this relationship exists which did give me some mild discomfort, but the bulk of their romance occurs outside of a nurse/patient relationship so overall I was okay with how things worked out here.

Eli is 27 to Gideon’s 39 and Gideon initially feels he’s too old for Eli but they form a strong friendship in their time on the cruise and after, take some time to get to know each other and ensure that their feelings are real during some time apart before the romance really gets started.

The main barrier to their HEA is that Gideon is closeted and to a lesser extent, machinations by Frankie to break them up.

There are no prizes to guessing where it all ends up – this is a romance after all, but the journey was fun and sweet and sexy so I’m not complaining. Frankie was perhaps too much of a caricature villain, but I enjoyed all of the other cast members very much.

The narration was very good but not without some small issues.

Eli had a Welsh accent which had, to my ear, some intermittent moments of inconsistency but for the most part it was well done.

Gideon’s voice was deeper and upper-crust English so there was good differentiation between the two main characters. Oz, Silas, Niall and Milo also had distinct voices and I especially liked Mr. Leslie’s portrayal of Jacinta and the older lady on the cruise ship with whom Gideon strikes up a friendship.

I think though that my impression of Frankie was not assisted by the voice Joel Leslie gave him, which added to that Guy Ritchie-esque, moustache-twirling villain vibe.

Eli is fond of a bit of dirty talk and finds that Gideon responds favourably to explicit description so I’ve bumped up the steam level rating just a little.

Otherwise, technically the performance was great, with nice tone, pacing and emotion.

Gideon didn’t start off the book being particularly likeable but it quickly became apparent that this was largely due to self-hatred and as he started to find his way to happiness his more stellar qualities came to the fore. He thinks of himself as a “grumpy bastard” but he is always kind and caring of Eli and he is deeply generous with his friends, found family and Milo.

I liked that the story took it’s time to build to the romance and the two men built a solid friendship before embarking on more. Gideon was an enjoyable listen with a talented narrator. Definitely recommended.

Kaetrin


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5 thoughts on “Gideon by Lily Morton

  1. Very nice review, Kaetrin, and most of your small issues I picked up on too. I love Joel Leslie but wasn’t too enamoured of his welsh accent (I had a welsh father). It was ok but not quite right. You’ll enjoy Milo’s story, it’s really sweet.

      1. Welsh accents are HARD. Or rather, they can be difficult to sustain. I can mimic a lot of accents, but that one always stumps me!

        1. Yes, and there’s North and South Wales and they really are quite different. I really like Joel doing an Aussie accent – does he get that true, Kaetrin and Caz?

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