The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Review By Ulysses Dietz
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Amazon Link: Amazon

Andrew Grey gives us an “own voice” version of a romantic fantasy that really works.

I have to say, the core premise of this series (Cowboy Nobility) is rather tongue-in-cheek, sort of the way The Beverly Hillbillies was when I was a kid. But Grey weaves his story deftly, and makes his characters instantly believable—and emotionally relatable.

Randall Whealton is the Earl of Plymouth. All we know of him at first is that he’s an arrogant young aristocrat who irritates his close friend, George, the Duke of Northumberland, at their London club. George’s husband, Alan Justice, an American rancher from Wyoming, draws the earl into a poker game, where he loses a big bet and must come and work off his debt on the Justice ranch for two weeks.

OK, that’s a goofy set up—but it nonetheless creates a scenario that I was very much looking forward to: the snooty aristo in the Wild West.

The twist here (and it’s the first of this series I’d read, so I had no context) is that while the duke’s husband is a large-scale, successful rancher in America; the romantic lead is a lowly ranch-hand, Sawyer Kincaid, who has found peace and safety among the Justice family on their sprawling spread in Wyoming.

To me, Sawyer is the genius element in this story arc. He’s a laconic cowboy who loves nothing more than wide open spaces—unless it’s the horses he cares for. He takes an immediate dislike to the handsome Brit, and enjoys putting him to work (as ordered by his boss, Alan Justice) doing the kind of dirty work that defines being a cowboy in 2025.

And there’s the sly hook. The earl knows all about horses and stables and wide open spaces. He just doesn’t know about emotional maturity and has no training in anything other than aristocratic propriety. It’s not that he’s a bad man; he’s the result of a bad father. Just like Sawyer Kincaid.

Although the opening drama takes place in Wyoming, I was pretty sure that the action had to move to the Earl of Plymouth’s estate in England. I really wanted that to be the case, and was pleased when it happened (for various reasons) about halfway through the book. This is when Sawyer’s character comes to the fore (and with a name that is redolent of the American West and thus sets him apart just as much as his cowboy hat). Sawyer and Randall give each other what their father’s didn’t—compassion and affection and human understanding.

Kincaid, who has been taught all his life to think little of himself, learns how wrong he was from a man who has been taught only to see himself as an aristocrat, without any softening influence. Grey handles the emotional morass of these two men with gentleness, and lets the reader see what needs to happen before he writes it into the plot.

This is a classic m/m story—but done with an expert’s eye and a gay man’s heart. The visuals throughout the story supported the action beautifully, and made the narrative feel inevitable and right.