Rating: 3.25 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
When Ziggy left home, he didn’t have a better plan than selling himself on the streets. Life for him now is all about trying to keep from freezing and making rent, and Ziggy wishes he had a better plan and someone he could call his own. When handsome and rich Damian picks him up once and then again, Ziggy thinks his life might be looking up. But life with Damian is anything but a dream and Ziggy winds up beaten nearly to death.
Marc knows his job as a paramedic often shows him the darker side of life. An early morning call changes him when he can’t stop thinking about the beaten man he transports to the hospital. Marc wants to know more about Ziggy and wants to help him recover. But Ziggy has to find his way again and he has a lot of damage to work through. Marc knows wants he wants though, and he wants to make Ziggy see that he deserves to be loved.
Ziggy is the focus of this book as the title, Saving Ziggy, implies. He is a fierce character as the book opens, trying to be brave and confident, but selling himself in the frigid weather is an awful life. The first part of the book focuses on getting to know Ziggy a bit and then seeing how he comes to be living with Damian. Damian picked Ziggy up and said and did all the right things while taking Ziggy to a warm home and feeding him, but it’s clear that Damian has ulterior motives, although Ziggy can’t or doesn’t want to see that.
Ziggy moves in with Damian, but there is no balance to their relationship and there are many red flags. Damian introduces Ziggy to Stuart, a man that makes Ziggy supremely uncomfortable, but Ziggy is trying to keep Damian happy and although Ziggy thinks about leaving, he has nowhere to go and it almost costs him his life.
Ziggy then meets Marc in an ambulance as Marc tries to keep Ziggy alive. Marc is captivated with Ziggy and wants to know more of Ziggy’s story and intervenes quickly to help. Ziggy has a lot of healing to do and should be more wary than he is, but the men find themselves falling for each other. The relationship between Ziggy and Marc is the one that is supposed to “save Ziggy.” However, it was all too fast for me as Ziggy is still recovering in the hospital and already falling for Marc after a violent and traumatic experience. Ziggy does need a lot of help to work through a whole lot of issues, but it seemed like if he just found the right man all would be right in his world and that didn’t work for me. While Marc is a good guy and genuinely cares for Ziggy, the story didn’t flow well given all that happened to Ziggy.
The story with Damian also wasn’t explored enough for me. He was a prominent figure in the first half of the book, but he became a caricature, and the resolution of his storyline was all off page and not nearly thorough enough to pull his character and his actions all together.
Saving Ziggy started off as a darker-edged book with an interesting premise. But the story didn’t settle Ziggy’s issues enough for me while leaving some other storylines too shallow by the end.
