All of the Above - Quinn Anderson Review

Thank you to Net Galley and Riptide publishing for providing me with an ARC Copy. All views and opinions are my own!


 “Brendon isn’t in a rut, per se—he just always seems to be in-between things. Jobs. Degrees. Boyfriends. He never finishes what he starts. The perfect path is out there somewhere, and if he can just figure out what it is, he’s certain everything else will fall into place.

The last thing he expects is to meet his soul mate in the pages of a magazine quiz. “Who Is Your Perfect Man?” by Matthew Kingston seems like a road map to his future husband: the author himself. Brendon may not have his life figured out, but if Matt is as romantic as his quiz, Brendon can check “true love” off his to-do list.

When Brendon fakes a meet-cute between them, Matt proves to be as wonderful as he hoped. The more Brendon gets to know him, the harder he falls. But Brendon has a confession to make: how can he explain to Matt that he arranged their “fated” meeting? Brendon can’t tell if he’s found his soul mate, heartache, or all of the above”

This was my first romance book which was LGBTQIA and was a male/male romance story! It was a good cheesy romance and I felt it was a good story to introduce me into a Male/Male romance.

Brandon has been a bit unlucky in love and has yet to find the man of his dreams until he stumbles upon a magazine with a quiz at the back for finding your perfect date and it just happens to include all his favourite things. Brandon finds out who wrote the article, Matt, and makes it his plan to ‘accidently’ bump into Matt at his favourite places (that he knows through the article) and ask him on a date. It was all fun until they start a relationship and Brandon is stuck on whether to tell him that the circumstances that they met under weren’t exactly confidential.

It was quick light-hearted read and I really enjoyed it. It was only 155 pages, so novella length which makes it even more interesting that I like it because I usually hate novellas – they’re normally not long enough and don’t have enough detail in them to wrap everything up but this did such a good job! It wrapped up really well and managed to cover everything in the sorry without leaving any loose ends and even had an epilogue to show what happened 2 years later. 

The characters were really well developed – especially Brandon who was the main character and you did feel emotionally invested with the plot. One minute you wanted to hate Brandon because of what he was going and then you were wishing they were together! It was a rollercoaster of emotions and it really kept you pulled into the story. There was obvious chemistry between Brandon and Matt also which I really enjoy in a story and obviously helps make a romance a lot more realistic. 

I also enjoyed how the plot had that modern twist to it – Brandon manages to find a lot out about Matt because of his online content and he only had a blog! It obviously was a bit creepy how Brandon went online and googled Matt before he went on a date and tried to set up the circumstances to meet him but as Brandon has mentioned, it’s something you can see all the time in romantic comedy films and they make it seem the norm. I’m sure a lot of people will have gone online and googled their partners that they’re going on a date with to see how much they’ve got in common before going on the date so it was interesting to see a twist on that!

Overall it was good, fun read and I’d definitely pick it up if you’re looking for a good book to give you an easy introduction in a Male/Male Romance.