Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Anthony
SERIES: Single Dads of Gaynor Beach
AUTHOR: Gabbi Grey
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 279 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 6, 2022
BLURB:
Anthony
During my seven years as a social worker in Gaynor Beach, California, delivering orphaned twins to their unsuspecting father is the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced. These babies lost their mother and they need a loving parent, but is adorable Scott Wexler up to that challenge? Transferring custody is one thing—walking away is something entirely different, especially with the stress of Christmas bearing down on Scott too.
Scott
After escaping a miserable childhood, I’ve made a fresh start in California. I’m in charge at the Gaynor Beach Public Library, I love helping people, and I’m feeling like an actual functional human being. Then social worker Anthony Rodrigues shows up on my doorstep with twins I fathered through a sperm donation, and suddenly I’m responsible for two tiny lives. Accepting help from the gorgeous social worker is a no brainer—admitting I want him to stay is going to take a lot more courage.
This 74k word gay romance is a slow burn, mid-angst, instalove with a geeky librarian, a by-the-book social worker, adorable twin-toddler terrors, and a beleaguered cat named Crumpy.
REVIEW:
Single Dads of Gaynor Beach is a multi-author, shared universe collection of standalone MM romances. Gabbi Grey has now contributed two titles to the series, Hugh, released earlier this year, and now Anthony. I did not read Hugh before reading Anthony; in fact, I didn’t even realize Grey had penned a previous book in this universe. Do yourself a favor and read Hugh first. Anthony heavily relies upon background and context from Hugh, and while Grey attempts to provide enough information within Anthony to give the needed context, it’s just not enough. I persistently felt like I was missing something, and trying to cobble together Hugh, his now-husband Oscar, and their adopted daughter Marlee’s story, and Anthony’s involvement as the social worker in their situation, really distracted from Anthony’s redemption story. You can’t appreciate the nuances of the redemption arc if you don’t understand what happened in Hugh, and I didn’t have the bandwidth to figure out the backstory alongside reading the current story. Maybe your working memory will have more success than mine …
Putting that aside, Anthony is a sweet story with a nice HEA, but the storyline is jumpy. The bulk of the plot focuses on how Scott unwittingly becomes the instant father of two precocious, curious infant twins, and Anthony finds himself inexplicably drawn into their situation. There’s not much romance or even storyline beyond the day-to-day parenting of the twins. It gets tedious after a while, and also frustrating that Grey doesn’t better balance the story. There are other elements that could have been explored in a more satisfying way, like the circumstances of Scott’s parenting the twins, their mother’s abandonment, and Scott’s panic attacks. Even the romance itself confounded me. Early on, Anthony definitively states that he is not attracted to Scott at all, he’s not his type – and it didn’t read like “he doth protest too much” to me. So later, when Anthony suddenly realizes he’s attracted to Scott, I questioned whether his feelings derived from his desire to parent and be part of a family, rather than true attraction and love for Scott.
Despite my commentary, I did get enjoyment from Anthony and was invested enough to follow Anthony and Scott to the end of the book to see how their relationship turned out. The twins are, of course, completely adorable and I liked the interactions between them and Anthony and Scott as they started to recognize and then trust them. Overall, Anthony is sweet, but it’s more a picture of unexpected parenthood than a romance.
RATING: 
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