Reviewed by Ro
TITLE: The Northern Lights in His Eyes
AUTHOR: Andrew Grey
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 219 pages
RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2024
BLURB:
When Garvin Haverton lost his husband, he lost himself. Unable to bear the reminders of their love, he left his friends in Los Angeles for the remote Alaskan wilderness, cut ties with his old life, and started over.
Model William Moreau has let Garvin hide for long enough. He misses his friendship, and he has to know if the spark he felt between them could ignite the love of a lifetime. So he packs a bag, books a flight, rents a car… and almost gets himself killed in a blizzard.
When William shows up half-frozen, Garvin is furious. Unlike William, he doesn’t need to be rescued. He has a life in Alaska: new friends, a dog, a job. But he can’t kick William out into the cold, and it doesn’t take many long, cold Alaskan nights before he realizes that he may have a life, but he hasn’t moved on. He could do that with William. The chemistry between them could heat his little cabin all on its own. But William’s life is in LA, and Garvin can’t go back. Is their unlooked-for romance doomed from the start?
REVIEW:
Garvin (my brain kept reading this as Gavin) had an epic love with his beloved, John, but “…a defect in John’s brain that had been there since birth had taken him away” and this left left a gaping wound. He tried for five years to keep going in their home of Los Angeles and it just wasn’t working. “I left because I couldn’t take it anymore. John had been gone five years, and I wasn’t healing. John was everywhere – in the place where I lived, in the things I was surrounded by.” That included their friends. So, finally, Garvin left LA for Alaska and basically cut off anything to do with his former life.
One of those pieces of his former life was William, a beautiful supermodel and good friend to both John and Garvin. I felt bad for William because not only do his friends (and Garvin) think he doesn’t think. “Typical William. He floundered his way into a situation, made all the wrong decisions, and hoped he’d come out all right.” What makes it worse is William himself thinks that about himself. “But maybe that was what he really was – some fuckup who would never be anything beyond his looks: pretty but stupid.” Except he isn’t. He misses John and Garvin. He can’t do anything about John, but he heads to Alaska to track down Garvin. Unfortunately, he nearly dies in the attempt and is only saved at the last minute when he finds Garvin’s cabin. Garvin is unhappy, to say the least, to see him but William is pissed too. “Did you figure that we just stopped existing…or maybe we didn’t matter to you? Or was it John’s memory that didn’t matter to you?”
Since they are snowbound, Garvin has to make the best of it. William wants him as a friend and someone to love while still respecting John’s memory. So the two of them start to reconnect (with attitude from Garvin) as friends. It was somewhat annoying how Garvin treated William as incompetent sometimes, especially when they have to go out on a winter rescue at a mining camp, then again when they are returning to the mining camp for documentation. “Maybe he was stupid for bringing William along…”. He didn’t want to bring William at all and I was happy that William was instrumental.
There is a plot line involving the mining camp, one that is all too familiar in real life. I liked seeing Garvin begin to reclaim his life, mainly thanks to William. The descriptions and trials of the Alaskan winter were so interesting.
RATING: 
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