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As my mother's 24/7 caregiver, November being National Family Caregiver Month has always been important to me. Not because I want personal recognition for what I do but to help show people that caregiving is more than just medical assistance, that it effects every aspects of a person's life. I would give anything to make it so my mother did not need the assistance but that isn't possible so I do this so she can have the best quality of life and still live in her own home. So I realized that there are stories out there that have caregivers and whether it's a big or small part of the plot doesn't matter, they help show people what caregivers provide all within very entertaining romances and reading experiences.
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The Gardener and the Marine by RJ Scott
Summary:Ellery Mountain #9
Harrison is alone and hurting with his memories gone, but Toby shows him that love can heal even the most broken of hearts.
After losing his entire team in a roadside bomb, Harrison is left with a traumatic brain injury, a broken body, and scars on his heart that might never heal. Staying at the Ellery Mountain Veterans Center is the first step in healing, but short-term memories evade him, and the only thing he trusts is the love of Barney, his support dog.
Until he meets Toby.
Toby lands the chance of a lifetime, using his horticultural skills to aid in working with veterans during their physical and mental recovery. Meeting Harrison on his first day goes badly, but there is something between them that could be more than just friendship.
With time, it could even become love.
**Triggers for PTSD and past suicide ideation**
*Can be read as a standalone - some mention of previous characters, but not enough to cause an issue*
**This story was previously available in weekly instalments in my newsletter. The file has been edited and a few scenes added.**
I've loved RJ Scott's Ellery Mountain series ever since I first discovered it 6 years ago, so to find there was going to be new entries, needless to say I was ecstatic. The Gardener and the Marine was first available as weekly installments with the author's newsletter, however I didn't take the opportunity to read it that way. At first, time just got away from me and then I decided that RJ Scott's works are often a can't-put-it-down read for me so I decided to wait until completed.
However you chose to read it, Toby and Harrison's journey is brilliant!
I won't go into many details, not that this is a mystery or anything like that and we all know her stories are HEA but the mens' journey is so heartwarming, there are moments some might call heartbreaking but I would use the term "heart-hurting", I just don't want to spoil even the tiniest moments. Harrison is at the heart of the story with his learning to live life with brain injury and loss, I couldn't help but want to wrap him up in Mama Bear Hugs to protect him but he has Barney for that. I've read stories before with therapy animals but there was just something about the way the author brought Barney's presence to the the table you felt like he was right there next to you, helping you through the story as well.
I grew up a farmer's daughter and when my mother became ill my parents shifted from a grain & feed crops to a vegetable/fruit farm. My mom was to ill to work the farm but she did the business side as we sold fruit and veggies to local stores. I mention this because I could see first hand how farmlife and gardening helped all three of us accept her health situation. So seeing Toby realize how the family business of gardening helps his brother live with autism and turn it into therapy for the Ellery Mountain Veterans Center really spoke to me. The connection the garden creates between Toby and Harrison is beautifully written as well as giving Harrison an opportunity to strengthen his mind and body made this story even stronger.
The Gardener and the Marine, simply put, is a truly wonderful, touching, heartfelt gem from beginning to end.
A last note, if you haven't read Ellery Mountain before, it's not a series you have to read from the beginning as each entry focuses on a different couple. Personally, I can't imagine not reading it in order just because I'm a series-read-in-order kind of gal but it's not necessary, you won't be lost, yes previous characters make appearances but again knowing their story or not doesn't effect the story you choose to read. However you choose to read this series, I highly recommend definitely doing so.
RATING:
Summary:
Spruce Texas Romance #2
Cody Davis is gonna make a sinner out of me.
Yes, I know exactly who he is.
The wounded soldier at the end of Willow Street. Intimidating. Devastatingly handsome. Muscular body chiseled from stone. Deep dark eyes that dare you to come near. Attitude for days.
And I just became his caregiver.
Everyone warned me to stay away from him - including my father, the respected minister of our small town of Spruce. But clearly I'm too stubborn to heed good advice, especially when Cody Davis is as frustratingly attractive - and persistent - as they come.
As the preacher's son, I have strict morals I must live by. But each day spent with that aggravating hunk makes me question them. My safe and fragile world is turning upside-down, and I'm not sure I have the strength to stop it.
And even worse: I'm not sure I want to.
Temptation this bad never looked so good.
This soldier is gonna make a sinner out of me.
* This is a standalone male/male romance set in the same fictional small town as "Football Sundae". Steam, humor, and a whole lot of southern sass guaranteed. *
The Gardener and the Marine by RJ Scott
I didn’t look at them, let alone talk to them, and even though I sensed Daniel wanted to ask me if I was okay, I ignored him and was quickly halfway up the stairs, my hand on Barney’s collar, hoping like hell for my leg not to buckle. He didn’t call up after me. No one shouted in this place, because it was an oasis of peace and a secure shelter for all those damaged vets who’d been chewed up and spit out by war.
When my recollection of why I was here hit me front and center, I counted myself as one of the lucky ones to find a place to hide. I wasn’t a danger to anyone else, but I was a danger to myself. The night terrors, the panic attacks, the stupid fucking inability to be a goddamned man—that was why I was there. The hospital staff healed my body to the best of their ability, the shrinks attempted to fix my head, but I didn’t have peace, and Barney was the only thing I cared about.
Caring got you hurt, and I was too raw to extend any affection or understanding to anyone but Barney.
I slumped onto my bed, then flopped backward, hands extended to each edge, Barney jumping up and curling himself right into my side. My heart raced, my head hurt, but once I matched my breathing to Barney’s and allowed his presence to soothe me, I began to calm.
“Danno, Brat, Diaz, Spook, and me,” I whispered into the room. “Danno, Brat, Diaz, Spook, and me.” The names of the fallen were a reminder of what I’d seen and lost and were a way to connect with the world around me. Other people grieved Danno and Brat’s loss—they’d only been kids both of them with big families. Diaz had a girlfriend who blamed me for her beloved dying on my watch. Spook had been married no more than a month and had left a pregnant wife behind.
I had my mom, but I’d pushed her away when I was in hospital. I know that because it’s written in my book.
Why didn’t the explosion take me?
Born Again Sinner by Daryl Banner
Prologue
Cody
Two months ago, I opened my heavy eyes and found a round, beady-eyed face hovering over mine like an insect.
“Good morning, Cody. Do you know where you are?”
Every appendage was wrapped up like a taco. The last thing I remembered was Pete shouting at me to move. “MOVE!” His urgent voice, that one stupid word, echoed ceaselessly up and down the long-ass empty hallways of my ears for weeks on end. The fucker would not shut up.
“Do you know where you are?”
And neither would this nurse. “Fuck off,” someone spat back, far, far away from me.
Someone. I didn’t even recognize my own voice.
I remember trying to move, but everything was so slow. I felt like a bug trapped in a honeyed Petri dish. “Where’s Pete?”
“You’re at Prairieland Medical. Do you remember—”
“I know where the hell I am. Where the hell is Pete?”
MOVE!
It wasn’t until four days later—four fucking days later—that I learned exactly where Pete was, and it wasn’t any damned place I’d be returning to anytime soon.
He was back at the base. He suffered scratches. That lucky fucker stood two feet away from me and suffered scratches.
And there I was, plugged into machines in a bed with metal in my left leg and arm.
Yeah, maybe I should’ve moved.
They don’t waste any time either, these insects called nurses. They had me rolling left or right on my bed every damned day, sitting up, lying back down, doing pull-ups on the hand grip over the bed—all sorts of circus shit to see what needed attention, to see what was broken. Long story short: fucking everything. I heard the phrase “embedded shrapnel” about a hundred times too many a day. And: “Now try this”. And my favorite: “Does it hurt?”
How could anything hurt when all I felt was anger?
MOVE!
Who had time to care about any “embedded” anything when I couldn’t move my left leg without screaming out in pain?
MOVE!
What kind of stupid shit would I bother to “try” when I knew damned well that the only family I ever had—my brothers in the military—were continuing their missions without me?
“When am I going back?” I asked anyone within earshot. I must have asked just as many times as the nurses asked me to try this, to try that, to move this way and that.
It was on a day two weeks later that I was given an answer: likely never.
What was the point in taking my recovery seriously when the only thing I could look forward to was returning to civilian life in a small town I hated? That was the whole reason I enlisted—to get the fuck out of that town I was about to be condemned to live in once again.
Maybe the insects should have gotten the hint the first time I forced myself out of my bed on my own and almost bled out halfway down the hall because one of my drain balloons fell off, dropping to the hallway floor like a damned Christmas ornament, except the shattering was less pretty.
MOVE!
That’s all I kept trying to do, follow Pete’s advice that could have saved my life and kept me among my brothers.
Instead, it only saved my life.
“You’re making it worse,” the nurse chirped at me each time she returned me to my bed. “You won’t recover if you don’t do it properly. You’ve got to get your head in the game and go through every step of the therapy. No shortcuts. Hey, don’t give me that look. Remember what you’re doing this for, Cody. Remember.”
Remember.
I remember feeling strong my whole life. I remember facing every bully in school with fearlessness. I remember standing up to my dad, who’s a lying, alcoholic shit stain. I remember spending years and years working out, strength training, and gaining so much muscle mass that no asshole in their right mind would ever fuck with me again—school bully and father alike.
And now it’s all for nothing.
Nothing.
Strength, the one thing I relied on my whole life, fled from my bones as fast as I could count the days slipping by.
“Get your head in the game, Cody.”
Yeah, my head was in the game. It was in the game since the day I signed my life away to the Army, and the Army sent me back home a damaged piece of meat. It was always in the game.
And I had already tapped out.
Writing love stories with a happy ever after – cowboys, heroes, family, hockey, single dads, bodyguards
USA Today bestselling author RJ Scott has written over one hundred romance books. Emotional stories of complicated characters, cowboys, single dads, hockey players, millionaires, princes, bodyguards, Navy SEALs, soldiers, doctors, paramedics, firefighters, cops, and the men who get mixed up in their lives, always with a happy ever after.
She lives just outside London and spends every waking minute she isn’t with family either reading or writing. The last time she had a week’s break from writing, she didn’t like it one little bit, and she has yet to meet a box of chocolates she couldn’t defeat.
Daryl Banner is an author and composer who graduated magna cum laude from the University of Houston Honors College with a degree in both Theatre and Psychology. During his time in college, he wrote, composed, and produced a musical under Tony Award-winning musical and Theatre producer Stuart Ostrow, as well as two original plays produced under the mentorship of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, who also mentored Daryl through the writing of his very first novel. In addition to new adult and M/M romance, Daryl also writes post-apocalyptic fantasy as well as dystopian. He is most inspired by the smart and unlikely hero, but urges you (the reader) not to fall in love with them; they may deceive you with their innocence.
Join his mailing list here to never miss out on the latest from Daryl Banner! He awards one of his subscribers an Amazon gift card every newsletter.
Fun facts: Daryl is also an obsessive piano player, video game enthusiast, and performer. He's been remixing video game music for over fifteen years. You can feed your ears with his remixes and original music on his YouTube page.
He also composes original soundtracks that accompany his books and series. You can listen to and download them here.
RJ Scott
BOOKBUB / KOBO / SMASHWORDS
EMAIL: rj@rjscott.co.uk
Daryl Banner
The Gardener and the Marine by RJ Scott
Born Again Sinner by Daryl Banner
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