Review: Andrew Grey Does It Again!! Thank Heavens.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 7, 2014
I must say, Andrew Grey never disappoints, and his wonderful new book, "A Courageous Ride", continues his unbroken string of triumphant and profoundly moving books about gay men.If you've read Andrew Grey before, starting this book will be like donning old, familiar, comfortable shoes. His books are always populated with engaging, smart, talented men, whose challenges are realistic and always revolve around finding love, home and family with each other. "A Courageous Ride", I'm glad to say, is no exception.This is a simple story of two men - Indigo, a young ranch owner and former top bull rider, and Marshall, a well-off musician struggling to find a conducting position with a reputable orchestra. Though highly educated, talented and respected, he seems to always come in second as he relentlessly auditions in a cross-country marathon of auditions.Exhausted from his non-stop trek and more-than-a-little discouraged, Marshall jumps at the suggestion of his best friend, a renowned New York surgeon and rodeo fan, to book a week's R&R; at a dude ranch near Houston.We all know what ensues as Indigo and Marshall meet and fall in love. That's a given. After all, it is M/M Romance. What makes this book so special is the tender way these two grow closer while the specter of the end of Marshall's stay hangs over their heads like an oncoming storm.I must admit that, as with many Andrew Grey novels, I was moved to tears by their parting, but not nearly so much as by the epilogue. I defy you to experience the debut of Marshall's symphony, inspired by (and capturing) the beauty and power of the ranch that has become so important to him and the man who has become home. No tricks or conventions used to move you, either. The situation, the love, the music will combine to lift your heart. Bravo, Mr. Grey!Andrew Grey is one of the very best gay romance writers in the world. His description and dialogue evoke, rather then 'tell". His plots are always on the side of the angels, his characters, flawed but beautiful.My only niggle is a very small one. For whatever reason, this book was not as well-edited as his others. There was one glaring tech error which is surprising for an author who has successfully written a great deal of high-tech into his books. He writes that one of the characters reserved the "Web page at Circle R Ranch dot Com". Andrew, Web pages do not have dot-com names. DOMAINS do. Web pages live under domains. You cannot "reserve them". CircleRRanch.com is a Domain Name, not a web page. There were a few other typos that should not have evaded a good editor, such as misspelling one characters name, "Sam", as "San", on at least one occasion, and the sentence: "I'll pick you up at nine tonight and we'll going out", apparently missing its verb - probably "be"?Certainly, this book is still infinitely better edited than most of the gay fiction I've been reading, over the last year, on my Kindle. But I take Mr. Grey to task for this because his writing is so fluid, so propulsive, that it grabs me at the very first sentence and doesn't let me go until "the end" - which makes these errors so much more jarring than they might be when made by lesser authors.Be that as it may, I'd rather have an Andrew Grey book with a few typos than a perfectly-edited book by almost anyone else.If you want to be moved, if you want to find hope and home, read "A Courageous Ride". And, if you're not familiar with Mr. Grey's other works, rest assured that you are about to experience the great pleasure of finding a heretofore unknown treasure of LGBT literature.