Pop culture influence (and not having HBO Max-thanks UK)strikes again.
For context these are mxm romance books:
Game Changer (Book 1 – Scott & Kip) – hockey captain x normal smoothie shop worker
Heated Rivalry (Book 2 – Ilya & Shane) – rival hockey captain x rival hockey captain
The Long Game (Book 6 – Ilya & Shane; story continued)
I’ve never read a sports romance novel before so I’m not sure if all of them are written like these but these were very surface level books. Normally I would take these books as they are presented but the author sort of edges us with commentary about the state of hockey (predominantly white male sport), its homophobia, being a poc athlete and bro culture in professional sports but I feel like she gave up saying anything real or profound which was disappointing. If you are going to touch at all on these topics as an author, take it all the way or leave it out.
Book 1. (was this the author’s debut novel?)
This book reads like a repurposed fanfic (I think it was?) because the characters read like we are supposed to know them from somewhere else and care. No build up of the relationship. Kip was especially underdeveloped. He was the equivalent of wet bread, a weak character with no distinguishing personality. I had no reason to like or root for him.
Hated that insta love and I think the overall timing was way too fast, again, repurposed fanfic vibes. The whole story from meeting to Scott kissing Kip on live telly happened in like 2-4months. I don’t think the time was spent at the start to build the necessary tension between the two so I skimmed every sex scene after the first 2 because I’m not sure why I should be this invested in the couple when they don’t do anything but have sex. Honestly, I feel like overall we should’ve had less sex in the book.
What I liked about this book (that wasn’t in 2&6) was that it touches on the culture of misogyny in how players treat and see women and abusers against women in the sports and the pressure to not be an “other” in the locker room so I’ll give it that but it was very surface level writing; throwaway sentences vs valid commentary. Nothing deep explored.
In the end I think both Kip (not wanting a hidden life) and Scott (not wanting to come out of the closet as a professional athlete) had valid points. Literally look how many professional athletes are out in any sport in real life.. exactly. I also did not like that Scott literally told Kip what that relationship was going to be like at the start since he was a closeted professional athlete and he accepted the terms then got mad when the terms didn’t change and put a bit of pressure on Scott to do things he was uncomfortable with. My very unpopular personal opinion was that relationship was too new for Scott to take that leap of faith (and professional repercussions) to come out.
I’d have DNF’d if I didn’t already know the ending. I read this book after reading books 2&6 (Ilya & Shane) because I wanted context to Scott’s story. My perspective on this book may be biased because I read the other books first. I found myself living for Ilya crumbs.
Book 2.
Opening a book with a sex scene is crazy work lol. I don’t think I’ve ever read that in any book before. We went from insta-love in book 1 to insta-lust in book 2. It’s marketed as rivals to lovers but the rivalry but was just a ruse because these men were loving each other since their 2nd meeting..and were hunching that whole time so that “rivalry” was never real…
I also prefer slow burn romances but a time jump-hockey match-hotel sex-monologue every few pages over in an 11 ish year situationship got a bit old and not great reading after a while. It’s one of the reasons why it takes a bit of suspension of belief to accept they are in love. These men saw each other about 2-3 times per year over 11 years and they almost never do casual domesticity or chats so like what is there to fall in love with..? These men do not know anything about each other.
Like book 1, most of it was sexual and all the sex scenes are very repetitive I think with minor tweaks to the writing? Like almost copy and paste each time. But at least Ilya and Shane were more fleshed out characters. Ilya more so. You can see that the author favours Ilya in her writing.
My main gripe with this book is the way it doesn’t discuss the gravity of certain subjects like being a poc (Shane is half Japanese and it has zero bearing on the story) in a predominantly white male sport and homophobia in professional sports. Like I know Shane was getting racially abused badly on social media and in that damn locker room every time they lost and not even a stray comment was made about it. Shane was very white washed and I feel like had we not been told he was wasian in the beginning, you’d never pick that up in any context. Very poor choice on the authors part.
Book 6.
The author definitely hit her stride in this book. It was a better and more serious book than Heated Rivalry.
But again you can tell the author favours Ilya. Shane has very little POV in this book and she basically glosses over Shane’s muted spiralling over telling his teammates he’s gay (and some being weird about it) and the rumours about him and his anxiety and his eating disorder. While both Ilya and Shane are struggling with the secrets and reality of being together long distance, Shane comes across as the asshole up until the 70% mark of this book when he proposes as a bandaid fix to the relationship. Ilya gives up everything including his mental health for him and the character basically accepts that as something he’s owed and goes about his business. Very jarring to read.
Shane also comes out to his teammates and again the author doesn’t address how an out gay wasian in the NHL would be getting unprecedented levels of hate from other professional athletes in the match and the locker room because those rumors would be FLYING.
Again too much sex, very little communication which was literally the cause of the issues in this book.
My main gripe with this book is that the characters spent about 13 years in debilitating fear about the fall out of their relationship when it gets out (they were outed), we see very little of that. Also to make Shane trip during the match was a disservice to the character. An awful plot decision. From what we know about the character, that would ruin him mentally (but it doesn’t :/) I wanted to see more media and public reaction to that trip and I wanted to see how Shane actually deals with the hurt of having everything he fears actually happen (rejected from his team he’s given his blood sweat and tears to). The book needed that fleshed out.
The Hollywood ending to this book was so unreal lol.
Overall 2/5 for writing. I’m not reading those other 3 books. I think 1100ish pages was enough.
by engchica