REVIEW: Davo by N. R. Walker
When Fergus Galloway takes on a research trip to a tiny mining town in the far Western Australian outback, he’s as far from Sydney as he can get.
Which is entirely the point.
He arrives in Pannalego totally unprepared for the baking heat, unprepared for the people who call it home, unprepared for the craziness and the laughs. And absolutely unprepared for the man he meets there who steals his heart.
Davo is a mining man, as rugged as he is gorgeous. Loves his found family, loves where he lives, and loves his life. He also loves the feel of soft fabric on his skin.
What was supposed to be a short field trip changes Fergus’s life. Going to a place many call uninhabitable might turn out to be the only place he wants to live.
Dear N. R. Walker
It was the cover that made me do it. I certainly couldn’t resist all that delicious pink tulle any more than Davo could. Another reviewer mentioned that this category length story was light on conflict and, due to some personal issues, I thought this sounded perfect. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Fergus arrives in hot, hot, hot – did he mention that it is scorchingly hot – Western Australia to spend four weeks at a remote mining town doing a study on how these conditions affect those few who live there permanently as well as the FIFOs (fly in, fly out) who rotate through. He wanted to get as far from a past boyfriend as possible and this is as far as it’s possible to get from Sydney and still be on mainland Australia. But wow it’s hot.
It gets even hotter for Fergus when, at the welcoming party held for him, a delicious man casually wearing a skirt shows up. At first Fergus thinks that these people have somehow heard that Fergus is gay and are playing a joke on him but it becomes clear that Davo wears skirts because he wants to and no one bats an eye. Fergus also comes to the realization that this is a kink he never knew he’d enjoy. Davo quickly makes it clear that he likes what he sees in Fergus and the two strike up a relationship. But Fergus is only supposed to be there for a month.
So yeah, there’s not that much conflict here. Fergus is fleeing a bad relationship but it’s all in the past and he reveals that the one who did him wrong gained nothing from it. Davo tells Fergus that only a few men have ever taken issue with his skirts and Davo settled that with his fists immediately. So that’s that.
Davo and Fergus swiftly begin their relationship. They’re both so turned on and ready for sex that their first encounter starts with hot kissing end ends when they climax before even getting their clothes off. After that it was anal all the way. Davo loves the feel of skirts around his thighs and he loves taking it hard and deep from Fergus. It’s great that Fergus loves topping but that’s all readers get, sexually speaking.
The found family aspect of the book is wonderful and the secondary characters are colorful but frankly, beyond being “endearing” they are fairly two dimensional. It’s clear that Fergus is coming to love the place and he tries to make himself useful. But it was made pointedly obvious. It’s Fergus who automatically helps someone stock the general store, it’s Fergus who miraculously discovers how to soothe a savagely cursing Cockatoo, it’s Fergus who praises and then suggests to a metal working artist that he should sell some of his artworks – no, really he should. The means by which Fergus will be free to realize his dream is also obvious. Also that he and Davo are just perfect together. The third act (non-relationship) issue comes from nowhere although it’s something that does occur in real life. Yet even that is quickly resolved.
I enjoyed a lot of the book but I also realized that I wanted some relationship conflict. It was all just too sweet and angst free – well except for Fergus immediately negatively prejudging and moaning about how bad he thought the International Night meal would be. Fergus, that’s why a lot of small town people dislike big city slickers. But reading it was like trying to eat a 9×11 pyrex dish of marshmallow fluff coated with chocolate syrup. Too sweet and too bland. C
~Jayne
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An Australian Outback m/m romance I really enjoyed was Lisa Henry’s TWO MAN STATION, if you haven’t already read it. A city cop arrives in an Outback town (his reasons for transferring there are gradually teased out over the course of the book) where he meets his partner, a widower with a young son. The harsh (and hot!) beauty of the Outback almost becomes a secondary character in the story. Highly recommended.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Thanks for the rec. I’ll put it on my list.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @Jayne. I’ve enjoyed several books by N.R. Walker, but this one is not calling my name.
Like @DDD, I also recommend Lisa Henry’s TWO MAN STATION. I also enjoyed the historical By The Currawong’s Call by Welton B. Marsland which also has an outback setting.
@Kareni: Ooh, a historical. That looks interesting, too.
I really enjoyed this and would have given it a B+, but I was quite happy for a no angst read. I enjoyed the main characters, but also reading about a company town in the outback.
I do often find M/M books too sex focused and often skip the sex scenes. (Women write a lot of the M/M books I have found, which causes me to worry about fetishizing (a word?). I try to read as many M/M LGBTQIA+ writers as i can find, to support representation.)