Blog Tour: Open Hearts by Logan Meredith (Guest Post + Review)

Blog Tour: Open Hearts by Logan Meredith (Author's Guest Post + Review)

Hi, all.  This is Logan Meredith, and I want to thank Bayou Book Junkie for allowing me a chance to introduce Open Hearts, the third book in the Heartland Series.

I joke in my author blurb that I started writing because characters speak to me and that’s the honest truth.  Occasionally, I’ll get one who becomes annoyingly tenacious.  From the beginning of Healed Hearts (Heartland Book One), I knew Asim was going to demand his own story.  The handsome, closeted, self-loathing firefighter, who almost comes between Seth and Jude had so many secrets to tell. I knew Asim was a lapsed Muslim.  I knew he was raised in New York and would have deeply personal ties to the terrorist attacks on September 11 and Steven, his first love, would play an integral part of his self-discovery.  However, when I completed Healed Hearts, Asim didn’t quite feel ready for the man of his dreams.

Because I loved Asim and his character was insomnia-inducing persistent, I kept adding to his backstory while I was writing Expanded Hearts.  Open Hearts had more starts and stops than any of my previous works, but I could never settle on Asim’s dream man.  Did he need someone who would help him connect to his past?  Help him move on?  Help him come out of the closet? I just couldn’t find the right fit. 

The most difficult part was figuring out how to honor Asim’s past without having it detract from the primary romance which refused to take shape.  My first attempt at Open Hearts was written in three parts.  The first part was entirely devoted to Steven and Asim’s relationship and was drafted in first person.   I realized almost 25,000 words in that Steven was dead, and generally speaking a good romance requires two beating hearts.  This is an excerpt from that first attempt.

“Asim, I missed your company this morning,” Steven stepped down from the fire engine.  I paused, cognizant of our position to my father’s office window.  Steven’s friendly smile lights up my insides.  “Where were you?”  he asked.  For a moment I allow his question to be an admission that he has missed me and that thought sends my pulse racing.  I explained my delay, blaming it on my father as if I am obligated to be here when Steven washes the truck.  Steven smiled again with a nod.  “Well, you have your geometry test today?” 

“Yes.” In fact, I was late for summer school.  Only I didn’t care.  Steven was perfect, and I would’ve happily faced the wrath of any teacher to be in his presence.  Although I was only seventeen and he was twenty-five, his face was more boyish than mine.  His light brown hair shone in the sun, and I detected strands of blond that have previously escaped my attention.  Unlike my skin which remained a predictable shade of cocoa year round, his was sun-kissed and bronzed only in summer months.  I liked these months best.  The added color made his biceps and lower arm muscles even more pronounced.  He folded them over his chest and caught me staring.  Not for the first time, I wondered if he understood how much I longed to feel them around my body.  Would he laugh at me if I asked him to?

Steven glanced around nervously as the door between the bay and the firehouse rattled.  My father stepped outside and checked something on the ladder truck.  He placed a hand on my arm with a squeeze, “So, off to school then, yeah?”  Steven bellowed for my father’s benefit and gave me a brotherly pat on my back.  I nodded and waved to my father, turning toward school. I took a deep breath, attempting to cleanse my mind of Steven.   It was a cruel and unusual punishment to want something that much.  I was a prisoner forced to stare at the key to my freedom, which hung just beyond my reach. I forced myself to recite the Qur’an. "O you who believe! Seek assistance through patience and prayer; surely Allah is with the patient." 

I woke up in the middle of the night with a little plot bunny about Asim meeting someone who also knew loss.  Ángel’s character developed much faster than Asim’s, and while Ángel was too out and proud to ever date a closeted man, I had plenty of material to start writing part 2—when Asim meets Angel and decides he’s ready to move on from Steven.  I wrote for hours only to reach a brick wall when I tried to bring these two men together.

My next attempt I reverted to third person and abandoned the three-part idea.  I introduced Ángel much sooner, but still tried to salvage some of my 25,000 words with flashbacks and diary entries.  The story just wouldn’t flow, and the backstory slowed the pacing to a crawl.  On the plus side, I discovered Ángel’s hatred of journal writing and worked that into the final novel.  I was so frustrated I set Asim and Ángel aside to concentrate on finishing Expanded Hearts.

Months went by before I tried again.  I decided I had to just finish it and stopped worrying about pacing to focus on getting the entire story on paper.  It worked—I finished, but the version had over 125,000 words and probably read like three love stories in one—Steven and Asim, Ángel and Zach and Asim and Ángel.  I read the entire story again and realized like Asim and Ángel had that for their relationship to truly work, I needed to do the difficult task of letting their past loves go.  Steven and Zach were such beloved characters. I wanted the reader to understand what great men they were and how they shaped Asim and Ángel’s lives.  I ended up deleting most of the flashbacks and paired down Asim’s journal entries to a bare minimum.   Open Hearts is still the longest of the Heartland novels, but it was absolutely the right decision and it’s become my favorite of the Heartland series.  I hope it will be yours too. Happy Reading!

About The Book

TITLE: Open Hearts
SERIES: Heartland #3
AUTHOR: Logan Meredith
COVER ARTIST: Paul Richmond
LENGTH: 260 Pages
RELEASE DATE: November 25, 2016

BLURB: Firefighter Asim Bishara knows it’s time to start living again. For years he’s avoided dealing with his estrangement from his Muslim family and the loss of his first love in the 9/11 attack. Through therapy, Asim begins to heal and combat his own self-loathing. He’s ready to leave his loneliness and isolation behind and find love again.

Moving on is proving more difficult for Ángel Stanford. When Ángel’s husband Zach died, Ángel’s dreams of a home and family perished along with him. He always wanted to be a stay-at-home husband and father, but he never imagined he’d be raising Gracie alone. The closer he gets to the handsome firefighter—and the more Asim becomes a part of his and Gracie’s life—the more Ángel feels like he’s betraying Zach. Ángel has to give himself permission to be happy and realize that while nothing will ever replace the life he had before, the future for him and his daughter can be full of happiness… if he’s willing to reach out and take Firefighter Asim Bishara knows it’s time to start living again. For years he’s avoided dealing with his estrangement from his Muslim family and the loss of his first love in the 9/11 attack. Through therapy, Asim begins to heal and combat his own self-loathing. He’s ready to leave his loneliness and isolation behind and find love again.

Moving on is proving more difficult for Ángel Stanford. When Ángel’s husband Zach died, Ángel’s dreams of a home and family perished along with him. He always wanted to be a stay-at-home husband and father, but he never imagined he’d be raising Gracie alone. The closer he gets to the handsome firefighter—and the more Asim becomes a part of his and Gracie’s life—the more Ángel feels like he’s betraying Zach. Ángel has to give himself permission to be happy and realize that while nothing will ever replace the life he had before, the future for him and his daughter can be full of happiness… if he’s willing to reach out and take it.

Buy Links: Dreamspinner Press || Amazon ||  Barnes & Noble || Kobo Store

3.5 Stars!

Very stop-start, very 'why does the guy bother??' tale that grew on me. More 'An open, desperate heart and a closed one' than the hearts of the title.

 

This is well-written, but tbh, it dragged quite a lot and I was tempted to give up more than once, but I re-read the blurb and decided to persist. I think it was worth my while, but, it felt as if about 1/3 could have been cut out and made it a better tale.

So, technically, the blurb is accurate and thinking about the tale, I can see why a 17yo Asim had ended up alone and living the life he had - I'm from an ethnic background and have married outside of 'the culture', but no, I've not been bereaved like Asim, so I can't accurately comment on his mindset. But, it felt as if he'd part idolised his lost love and shut himself off from everything, though I didn't really see/feel/read that he felt cut off from his family. In fact, until a certain event, I don't think they were mentioned much.

Angel - kind of didn't like him at the start, as he was still at the me, me, me stage of grieving, which unfortunately came over as selfish. I didn't like that he was the one in control and that he called the shots and that Asim danced to his tune. TBH, had I been the latter, I'd have cut my losses and moved on. I did, however, get his reluctance to share his heart and his daughter with someone else (he was fine sharing his body, though!), given that it hadn't been long since his husband had died. 

Asim wasn't the strongest character, but that's perhaps because he was 'damaged' and I was glad that counselling worked for him and made him accept himself and be proud of himself. I did think that he had a few too many issues to deal with, still, especially for someone who considered himself no-longer-Muslim and an atheist to boot, but I was prepared to cut him a little slack. However, it sounded a lot like he was in love with the idea of love a lot of the time, rather than having fallen in love with Angel, especially as they rubbed each other up the wrong way when they first met. 

In the end, I did feel differently about Angel and Asim showed a selflessness and maturity that helped win over his man, but he still needed to find his balls and man-up. I was quite frustrated with him throughout for being so self-effacing and non-assertive, which I didn't think was a cultural thing, especially since this was confirmed when a certain someone made an appearance. 

The tale ends very abruptly and rather unsatisfyingly, there needed to be more and I wanted there to be more, to know where and how it would end up for the leads. Overall, though, it's not a bad read, though I think some of the baggage (like the issue with cancer, like the issue with the thefts, like the on-off-ness of the relationship/non-relationship, the issue with the depressed father-in-law, the gloating fire department boss who really shouldn't be a boss if he can discriminate against people for their sexual orientation and protect bigots) could have been cut out and some things could have been firmed up (like where they went from where the tale ended, like who/what Asim would be to Gracie). 

ARC courtesy of Dreamspinner Press and Bayou Book Junkie, for my reading pleasure. 

About The Author

Logan Meredith began writing as a teenager when beautiful boys started keeping her company at night. Unfortunately, the voices she heard were imaginary, and their conversations resulted in horrible insomnia. They only let her sleep when she started typing their words down. Thankfully, being awkward as hell and a head taller than anyone else in the school afforded plenty of spare time for writing.

At first, she tried to make them play with characters from her favorite television series or books. She found her lost tribe with a ravenous, crazy group of fanfiction lovers online and started sharing her stories publicly. Then something amazing happened: new characters arrived and started demanding their own stories. Only they wanted their own world to play in and they wanted to find their true loves. So between her day job and making time for her family, she tries to keep up with the demands from her beautiful men for their happily ever afters.

A native of San Antonio, Texas and a graduate of the University of Texas-San Antonio, Logan currently resides in Indianapolis, IN. In addition to writing, she spends her time reading and re-reading her favorite books, cheering for the San Antonio Spurs, playing Words with Friends, and procrastinating pretty much everything else.

Logan is a proud member of the LGBTQA community and vocal advocate for mental health awareness, suicide prevention, and marriage equality campaigns.

Logan welcomes the chance to interact with readers.

Twitter: @LL_Meredith

E-mail: loganmeredith2015@gmail.com