Review: Finding Zach by Rowan Speedwell

Reviewed by Hannah
Finding Zach (Finding Zach #1) by Rowan Speedwell
Dreamspinner Press
Novel: 264pgs
5 Pants Off

Blurb:
For five years, Zach Tyler, son of one of the worlds richest software moguls, was held hostage, tortured, and abused. When he is rescued at last from the Venezuelan jungle, he is physically and psychologically shattered, but he slowly begins to rebuild the life he should have had before an innocent kiss sent him into hell. His childhood best friend David has lived those years with overwhelming guilt and grief. 

Every relationship David has tried has fallen apart because of his feelings for a boy he thought dead. When Zach is rescued, David is overjoyedand then crushed when Zach shuts him out. Two years later, David returns home, and he and Zach must come to terms with the rift between them, what they feel for each other, and what their future could hold. But Zach has secrets, and one of them might well destroy their fragile love.

Review:
This is a story of great pain and great love. The two are always inexplicably linked, but in this story it is more than that, you are following two characters that need to overcome such physical and emotional scars that love isn't enough to heal them.

Zach and David, their story is one that will have you feeling like you have read whole chapters without taking a breath, or feeling a heartbeat. Their need to be together is almost overpowering, but not enough to win out against all the damage life has inflicted on this pair.

When Zach returns from the Jungle after unimaginable tortures, with pain searing so deep from the memories he can’t shake, it seems almost impossible that this book could become anything other than heart-breaking. However, Speedwell knows how to open up her book to show the reader that, when it comes to love, there is always a glimmer of hope, and that hope comes in the form of David.

Although the there is strong emphasis on the love affair for Zach and David in this book, it is their friendship that provides the deepest examples of unconditional love. During the darkest moments for Zach, as you see his character try to overcome the nightmares of how horrifying scars were inflicted upon his body, and you see him resolve himself to never again being able to regain normality, it is David who reminds Zach, and the reader, of the lightness that is still there in Zach’s heart, a lightness that only a best friend can bring out, and it is those moments that provide the purest examples of love in this book, the love of two best friends, the love that only soul mates can have as they weather whatever life throws at them.

This book will take you on a harrowing journey as these boys emotionally try to find each other again, after years of being separated under the worst possible circumstance. As these boys, that were once childhood friends, have grown into men apart from each other, they both wonder if it is even possible to rebuild the love they once held, between guilt and trauma its seems almost impossible, but as anyone who is lucky enough to find their soul mate in a best friend will know, distance will never be enough to extinguish the connection two people have.

This book is moving, painful, heart-warming, heart-breaking and beautiful. As you follow Zach along his long journey to regain the life taken from him, and you listen to David as he tries to figure out how to help his best friend and the love of his life, you pray that they can find their way. This book is special, it goes past that of one of lovers finding their forever, it is a book of family, and warmth, and one that you will enjoy through all the tears and pain, as, even though the circumstances are extreme, you relate to what it is like to find that one person who makes you whole, whether that be a friend or lover, and you refuse to let them go.

This book grabbed me by the heart and wouldn’t let go, and I’m glad it didn’t. This is a beautiful story of finding courage in pain, and a book that I think everyone should read, not just M/M romance fans.

5 Pants Off