Neil isn’t a ghost, but he feels like one. Reincarnated with all his memories from his prior life, he spent twenty years trapped in a child’s body, wanting nothing more than to grow up and reclaim the love of his life.
As an adult, Neil finds there's more than lost time separating them. Joshua has built a beautiful life since Neil’s death, and how exactly is Neil supposed to introduce himself? As Joshua's long-dead lover in a new body? Heartbroken and hopeless, Neil takes refuge in his work, developing microscopic robots called nanites that can produce medical miracles.
When Joshua meets a young scientist working on a medical project, his soul senses something his rational mind can't believe. Has Neil truly come back to him after twenty years? And if the impossible is real, can they be together at long last?
Any Given Lifetime is a gay romance by Leta Blake featuring reincarnation and true love. This story includes some angst, some steam, and, of course, a happy ending.
This book and I started off on shaky ground. I'll get to my quibble but I just want to say up front that if you're in the Squishy Marshmallow club, chances are you'll like Any Given Lifetime.
I recycle. I like antiques. I believe things can be restored and that other people's trash is another's treasure so it follows that I'd believe in reincarnation. I'm also a romantic and there's nothing, NOTHING more romantic than someone traversing time and space to return to their beloved.
When Neil and Joshua first met Joshua was deeply closeted and though he loved Neil completely, they never consummated their relationship. I liked the romanticism of their chasteness and I liked that it through the tragedy of Neil's death it was an awakening for Joshua. He realized that he had let happiness slip through his fingers because of fear and resolved to never again squander an opportunity to embrace life and love fully if it ever returned.
It does in the form of one of Neil's organ donor recipients, Lee. Lee is a remarkably generous person who makes room in the life he makes with Joshua for Neil. There were moments where I thought Lee was a mirage but his altruism is something everyone should aspire to.
The first part of Any Given Lifetime is non-linear and shifts between Neil growing up, flashbacks of Neil and Joshua's time together and Joshua building a new life with Lee. If books that time jump are problematic for you, exercise caution.
Neil is cantankerous, difficult, cerebral, arrogant and bristly. Outspoken and aggressively blunt; there is nothing easy about Neil. Admittedly, I struggled with the way he treated Joshua when they met for the second time but as the narrative unfolded he started to make more sense to me. He has a generous soul, but he is exceedingly bad at showing it, aside from his complete and utter devotion to his work extending and bettering the quality of human life through nanite technology.
The last part finds reincarnated Neil back in Joshua's life in the future. There is some angst but mostly it's scorching. I think I drooled a little on myself. There's something about the reverse age difference top/bottom thing that is grunt worthy to me. Even though technically it's not really a reverse age difference. I think I just confused myself.
What Any Given Lifetime did in spades was squeeze my squishy marshmallow heart because it's so unbelievably romantic that these two could find their way back to each other after twenty years. It's unbearably touching that they have their own precious secret, something remarkable, a miracle really, that only a handful of people know.
They're soulmates. Death, space, time, two lifetimes... nothing can keep them apart.
My quibble, when I really examined and distilled it down came to this: my conception of reincarnation doesn't align with this one. This version seems cruel to me but that's very subjective on my part.
Lastly, LOVED Neil's mother and his roommate Derek! I loved that they became so close and I would be most pleased were Derek to get his own book.
Recommend to timeless romance fans.
A review copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.
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