Rented Heart Books in Order

The Rented Heart series is a two‑book sequence about men on the edge of collapse who find unexpected solace in each other. The stories are linked but can be read separately, united by themes of addiction, grief, found family, and the rocky path to believing you deserve love.

In Rented Heart, ex‑surfer turned businessman Liam Mallaney retreats to Holkham, a coastal village in Norfolk, after the death of his husband. His life has narrowed to work and quiet misery, and he has no intention of letting anyone in. Zac Payne, a rentboy who has left London but not his old way of surviving, spots Liam in a club and thinks he has found an easy mark. Instead, their paid arrangement morphs into something neither expected: real care, clumsy intimacy, and a connection that throws Zac’s loyalty to his best friend and flatmate Jamie into painful relief.

Liam is drowning in unresolved grief; Zac is stretched thin by loyalty and danger at home, where Jamie’s drug addiction threatens to pull them both under. When violence finds Zac, Liam has to decide whether he is willing to risk another heartbreak to fight for him. The book leans into hurt/comfort, but never pretends that love alone can untangle years of pain.

Soul to Keep shifts focus to Jamie, who has put the events of Rented Heart behind him but not the legacy of his addiction. Fresh out of rehab and with nowhere to go, he sticks a pin in a map and lands in Matlock Bath in the Derbyshire Peak District. There, on a flight home, he collides with Marc Ramsey, an ex‑Army medic working nights as a trauma specialist while he recovers from his own life‑changing injuries. Marc’s instinct is to keep busy and keep people at arm’s length; Jamie is chaos in skinny jeans.

Their relationship grows slowly, full of missteps, fear, and small acts of care. Jamie battles a different kind of illness that stalks him even as he stays clean, and Marc has to learn that being strong does not mean carrying everything alone. The romance is intense, but grounded in very ordinary struggles: paying rent, getting through the day without falling apart, learning to trust a body that has betrayed you.

Rented Heart as a whole offers exactly what its title suggests, men who think they are only good for temporary arrangements discovering that they might, against the odds, get to keep something—and someone—permanent.