Review: Jigs and Reels by Leigh M. Lorien

Elijah works in a cubicle, lives with his parents, and never goes on dates. It isn’t an exciting life, but it’s safe and easy and that’s good enough.

Then he meets Peter, a whirlwind of a man who leads a traveling renaissance band. Peter represents everything Eli usually avoids, but his boisterous enthusiasm is infectious… and his band needs a fiddle player.

When Eli agrees to fill in for a weekend, he awakens a part of himself he thought long gone. With Peter’s help, he shakes off the dust that has settled on his soul and remembers how to have fun.

But when the band asks him to join them permanently, is Eli’s newborn sense of adventure -- and insane crush on a man he barely knows -- enough to make him leave the safety of a life he’s clung to for years?


What do you do when you have a chance to have everything you never knew you wanted?

Elijah is a young man who is doing what he should. He went to school to get a degree in Accounting like his parents wanted and is now doing a job they think is accounting but it’s actually data entry and is apathetic about it. The only thing he’s ever had that he could call his own has been his fiddle playing. When his best friend Katie takes him out one evening to meet some new friends and tells him to bring his fiddle, Eli’s life takes a colorful turn.

Meeting the members of the Irish Folk band the Stone Rocks was fun. I am a total music nerd and spent many hours listening to the likes of Dropkick Murphy’s, The Pogues and Flogging Molly to drop a few band names and have a love for Irish/Celtic bands. Knowing that Doug, Hitomi and the oh so charming Peter play the musical styling, I was engaged. But it was really the quick attraction and flirtation that Eli has when he meets Peter that had me reading quickly before my work day ended.

“We’ve only known each other for like four days.”
“Romeo and Juliet killed themselves after three.”
“Romeo and Juliet were idiotic teenagers.”
“You make me feel like an idiotic teenager.”

The story is short and though it has a minor arc with a bit of angst, it’s fairly light on all points of romance. Eli is enamored of Peter in all forms; from the on stage costume he chooses to the charismatic singer of their band to the boy with the electric smile. Peter's ability to work the crowd bubbles over to his ability to loosen Eli up on stage and in bed.

Peter is a free spirit who recognizes the same in Eli and wants to give Eli the chance to live the life he never thought he could.

The music was a pure joy to follow along with and the sets at the Renaissance Faire gave me flashbacks to attending a few in my younger years and wishing I would have seen a band like the Stone Rocks upon entering the grounds. The story ends quickly with a HFN which makes me wonder if the author has plans to continue or just wanted to give the reader a flash into the beginning of a lovely romance.





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