Rating: 2.5 stars
Buy Link:
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Length: Novel


Greyson Fox is not a stranger to heartbreak—nor is he the sum of all the rumors spread about him, well, some of them anyway. He is most definitely a man who never stays around for a relationship and so the permanent bachelor moniker he’s gained is one that assuredly applies. But there are reasons that Greyson has shielded his heart and the loss of both parents and the one man he ever truly loved were responsible for the many bricks in the wall he’s built over the years. So what was it about a chance encounter with a ginger haired younger man that has left Greyson not only oddly dissatisfied with casual sex, but also a sense of having lost something that could have been special? Did that one night so long ago have that much effect on him?

Greyson is about to find out the answers to all those nagging questions. His business partner has hired a new batch of dancers and among the group is the very same man who left such an impression on Greyson so long ago. But if the cold shoulder he is getting from the gorgeous dancer is any indication of what he can expect, that ship may have sailed and Greyson is damned if he is going to let it get away without a fight.

I fear I may be in the minority with this book. First off, I feel I should address the trigger warnings at the end of the blurb. The warnings ended up being rather confusing to me primarily because the very minor and brief incidences they referred to were basically short lived, sketchily described, and glossed over quickly. I understand why the author chose to put the warnings in, but again they seemed to indicate some huge events that really never were fully described or took up much time in the story. In fact, that is probably my main complaint with this entire novel—that the story was told to us with large amounts of passive prose that described what had happened or was happening without engaging the reader in the action. We “heard” about the things that affected Greyson in his early years rather than experience them with him. We heard about what happened to Samuel, but never really got to see it first hand, nor were we directly involved in the situations as they played out. Instead, we were given some minor details after the fact. As a result, the story was slow, with long passages where I wanted to move on and get to the meat of the story, rather than just hear about it.

Th second big issue is the span of time covered in this book. From Greyson’s past, which took up a good portion of the story, we leapt into the present where suddenly Greyson is extremely wealthy and while I understood where some of the money came from, the scope of that wealth was left unexplored.  For instance, how he had opened so many clubs and got to be such a successful businessman was unexplained and felt a bit contrived as a result. After all, the last time we had seen Greyson in the first half of the novel he was dirt poor and worried that his lover was paying for everything. Where was his journey to who he was today? It got left behind and, as a result, made the story feel forced and disjointed. When you couple that with the idea that a one night stand, Samuel, suddenly turns up right there in the club Greyson happens to live above and you have a story that was just too neatly put together to be realistic at all. Then we had the sudden story arc involving human sex trafficking and the threat it posed to Samuel and honestly my head was about to explode.

‘Where is the story’ is a mantra I seemed to keep repeating over and over to myself while reading this book. I wanted there to be a heap more interaction between Samuel and Greyson before they conveniently fell into each other’s arms and declared their love. I liked the idea that we got a glimpse of where Greyson came from and the scars the death of his former lover left on him, but even that relationship went from zero to ninety in a short time and the fact that it began with Greyson essentially being hit on at the grave sites of his deceased parents was a bit strange. The entire story felt hollow with no sense of real connection between any of the characters.

There was so much potential in this novel. I actually liked Greyson and understood why he kept his heart under wraps, but the almost immediate thaw and instant love he felt for Samuel without ever really getting to know him was just too implausible for a guy who had spent years loving and leaving them, so to speak. I really think if the author had taken more time to develop the characters and establish the personal relationships that existed within the group, it would have made for an incredibly entertaining novel where I really felt connected and invested in what was happening to both Greyson and Samuel. I think this author has some real ability to create a good novel, but there needs to be more focus on developing the story lines more fully. Unfortunately, Greyson Fox, was a miss for me.