All for You by Andrew Grey

Title: All for You

Author: Andrew Grey

Genre: Contemporary

Length: Novel (200 pages)

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (11th September 2018)

Heat Level: Low

Heart Rating: 💖💖💖💖 4 Hearts

Blurb: The only path to happiness is freedom: the freedom to live—and love—as the heart wants. Claiming that freedom will take all the courage one young man has… but he won’t have to face it alone.

In small, conservative Sierra Pines, California, Reverend Gabriel is the law. His son, Willy, follows his dictates… until he meets a man in Sacramento, and then reunites with him in his hometown—right under his father’s nose.

Reggie is Sierra Pines’s newly appointed sheriff. His dedication to the job means not flaunting his sexuality, but when he sees Willy again, he can’t escape the feeling that they’re meant to be together. He’ll keep Willy’s secret until Willy is ready to let the world see who he really is. But if going up against the church and the townspeople isn’t enough, the perils of the work Reggie loves so much might mean the end of their romance before it even gets off the ground….

ISBN: 978-1-64080-429-6

Product Link: Dreamspinner | Amazon US | Amazon UK

Reviewer: Prime

Review: I read everything by Andrew Grey without much of a second thought these days, there have been very few of his books that I truly struggled to read. Grey has something of a formula where there is usually a single father struggling with a sick (or recovering) child when he finds love.

However, All for You, is something totally different by Grey and I really liked how the plot was handled. It could have been a predictable melodrama, way too close to comfort to stories you hear in real life, but what I like about this story is that there is always hope. In the darkness, when things in a small town seem impossible for closet gay men, there is hope of changing beliefs. That is what I loved most about this book.

The story is about Willy – aka Will or William, whatever. I personally think the name Willy sounds too childish, but I also think it strangely fits for a character who is controlled by his preacher father who wants Willy to be sheltered and to live the perfect hetero life and succeed him in becoming the next preacher. The problem is that this image is not Willy – he wants to do something more with his life and most importantly he knows that he is gay. He loves his small-town home of Sierra Pines but doesn’t like that he cannot be himself. When he goes to the city to a club for the first time he meets a man that can only be described as a gentleman. Willy is too innocent for words, but Reggie is something of a knight in shining armor.

Reggie had escaped to the city for the weekend to meet up with his best friends and go to a gay club and enjoy himself. His new life and new job as Sierra Pines’ new sheriff means that he can’t have a personal life in the town. Already Gabriel, doesn’t like the fact that Reggie respectfully declines to attend church. But then he finds out that Willy, whom he’d met the previous weekend in the city, is the son of the reverend. There is an attraction between the two of them and the chemistry is undeniable. They start to form a sweet friendship and soon their lives become undeniably entwined.

There is a small subplot line about “the rest stop” where shady things from drugs to toilet sex to something more sinister seems to be happening. I found this plot a little predictable (I figured out the culprit immediately) but I liked how this was used to move the story along and let us see more shades of characters that we thought were just bullies. No matter what some of the people have done, a couple of minor characters who start out unredeemable all have hope of healing and redemption, much like Willy and Reggie.

This is a happy book – there are some dark themes approached but Grey keeps to the light side of it in this one. As I said earlier, I like the hope and the hope for redemption, happiness and healing that this book offers.