Review: Reckless Hope

Author: J. Leigh Bailey
Series: Letting Go, #2
Released: August 24th 2015
Publisher: Carina Press
Length: 193 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Amazon

What's life without a little risk?

Or a lot of risk, if you're Sebastian Carlisle. He'll never live up to the legacy of his dead brother, so why try? Being the wild child in a family of stuck-up rich snobs suits him just fine.

Until he meets Micah Burke, and everything changes.

Micah's got too much going on for a relationship. Even if he could trust Sebastian, a distraction—a sexy, reckless distraction with a death wish—would only derail his carefully scheduled life. If it were just Micah, maybe that would be fine, but his mother and sister depend on him, and he can't let them down. Or at least that's what he tells himself.

A hot moment leads to a hot night leads to a connection neither of them are ready for. And when a crisis hits Micah's family hard, Sebastian will have to shed his bad-boy image and decide whether he can be the man Micah needs—and Micah needs to decide whether he'll let him.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping track obsessively like me, Carina Press has been publishing some of the best LGBT romances for a while now. They have amazing editors and seeing their name on the cover is a guarantee of my enjoyment. Letting Go series by J. Leigh Bailey is no different.

I’ve read Reckless Hope twice since I received the advanced copy three months ago, and as much as I enjoyed it the first time, I loved it even more the second time around. Knowing how it all ends allowed me to truly savor the emotions, to experience everything alongside Sebastian and Micah and to appreciate the smallest details that made the story richer and that much more beautiful.


Micah has been alone for far too long, abandoned and betrayed in some way by every adult in his life. Now, with a dead father, a disabled and depressed mother and a younger sister in need of an attitude adjustment, Micah has no one to count on but himself. It’s not only that he doesn’t trust easily, it’s that he doesn’t trust at all, and why would he? Life has thought Micah many lessons, and very few of them have been good. As much as he might want to at times, Micah doesn’t let go, he doesn’t relax, and he certainly doesn’t rely on other people. So when he meets Sebastian who is his exact opposite, a gorgeous, reckless rich boy who seemingly has no regard for others or even for his own life, Micah doesn’t understand why his heart keeps pulling him back.

Sebastian has many faces, but none of them are honest. He is a very good actor with a shattered heart and no one to see him for what he truly is. Micah intrigues him for so many reasons and for the first time, Sebastian truly sees himself with someone for more than a night. But Micah refuses to play along, making Sebastian pull all the stops.

The journey of these two boys and their respective families will make your throat constrict due to injustice each of them suffers constantly. They are both products of circumstances, tragedies and events other people caused. It was so very painful to see them struggle with things like trusting someone and having someone to rely on, but every happy moment was so much more rewarding because of all that pain. Both Sebastian and Micah are fantastic characters with very complicated backgrounds. The birth of their love is something you’ll have to discover for yourselves.

I loved the first book in this series, but Reckless Hope really stole my heart. I would recommend it even to those who rarely read M/M fiction.

A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher for review purposes. No considerations, monetary or otherwise, have influenced the opinions expressed in this review.