Common Goal

author: Rachel Reid

Eric is a 40-year-old hockey player with the New York Admirals. He eats clean, is deeply invested in daily yoga workouts and doesn’t drink. Kyle is a 25-year-old trust fund kid studying an MA in art history, but really, what he wants is to be a bartender. An unlikely pairing? Yup. But life pushes them together. They meet through mutual friends just as Eric is ready to admit to himself and others that he is bisexual. He and Kyle engage in some friends-with-benefits action that quickly crosses the border into the territory of the heart. But are the two prepared to give up their respective baggage in order to be together?

We all know that Kyle and Eric are going to end up together. If I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t pick up the book, but it is their unique journey towards that togetherness that would make their story interesting. This book has mixed results for me on this front. Their journey is not that unique or interesting. In fact, I could see the happily-ever-after dangling in front of them for most of the book and it was frustrating that it took them so long to see it. The conflict, which rested mostly on their age difference, was rather forced and thus not that interesting for me as a reader.

I did find myself genuinely caring about Eric and Kyle and their future happiness. So that’s something in the book’s favour: a genuinely likeable pair of main characters. Both Eric and Kyle are kind, open-hearted people. The kind of people with whom, for the most part, I don’t mind spending 83000 words. The secondary characters are plentiful, but colourful. While they don’t have arcs of their own, they are complex enough to be interesting to spend time with. I will say that while the sheer number of secondary characters was initially a little overwhelming, they quickly fell into place with enough context/reminders given each time so that I was able to place them.

Another potential stumbling block for me…the age gap. This was my very first May-December romance and I was a little nervous about being squicked out by the age difference, but that did not prove to be the case. While it is clearly the primary source of conflict between the two, there is ALL the consent during any of their sexual and non-sexual interactions which erases any possible feeling of ickiness.

So how did I get to a C+? In its favour, the chemistry between the two main characters is palpable and they’re both genuine, lovely people. On the downside, the conflict was flimsy to start with and grew more tiresome towards the end of the book. I found myself shouting at the characters to get a move on. And in the end (literally – snort-laugh), the resolution was too quick. It made their refusal to be together seem even more ridiculous. So it sits at a C+ for me.

– Lara

Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance

Out on the Ice

author: Kelly Farmer

Despite being Canadian, I’ve never gotten into hockey. (Don’t tell my government. I don’t want my citizenship revoked.) And yet, I’m excited every time I see a new f/f hockey romance announced. I enjoyed the first 60% or so of this one, but unfortunately it didn’t hold up after that point, leaving me disappointed.

Caro Cassidy is a retired professional hockey player in Chicago who’s been to a few Olympics. Now, she spends her days coaching girls at her rink. Caro isn’t closeted per se, but she keeps her work and personal lives totally separate, concerned that her business might fail if she were loudly and proudly out.

Amy Schwarzbach plays hockey professionally in Boston and she’s joining Caro as a summer camp coach. She’s bubbly, a bit of a scatterbrain, posts everything about her life on Instagram, and has lavender hair (I defy anyone to read this story without imagining Megan Rapinoe). Oh yeah, and she’s had a massive crush on Caro for ages.

When Caro offers to coach Amy so she can start her next season stronger than ever, Amy leaps at the chance. Despite having totally opposite attitudes and approaches to just about everything, they get along well and the crush soon becomes mutual. Both women know Amy is heading back to Boston at the end of the summer, so they agree to a fling. When neither can say goodbye at the end of the summer, they agree to a long distance relationship. But can they make that work, especially when Amy lives so publicly and Caro is afraid of what being visibly out might do to her business?

My most vivid memory of reading this book is hitting the point where they part at the end of the summer and wondering “Well, how’s it going to go from here?” Because there’s still around 40% or so and they already have strong feelings for each other. I figured it would be amazing or… not. And it was not amazing because that is where the pacing totally falls apart. I had to drag myself through the rest of the book because there’s no tension about whether they’d work things out. I was literally just waiting for them to figure out the logistics.

Before that, however? I had a mostly good time. I enjoyed the characters, especially seeing that Amy has more depth than she’s often given credit for. Caro helps Amy understand that dissonance between who she is and how she’s perceived, and encourages her to calm her mind so she can have more focus. Also, this book has some damn fine friendship writing, which we see in the scenes between Amy and her besties, and Caro’s found family with her best friend.

One note: there’s a lot of biphobia in this book, which is there to teach readers about what biphobia is and the harms it can cause. While it came across as preachy at times, I appreciated it as a bisexual reader. Sapphic romance has a history of bad bisexual rep full of stereotypes, which has been painful to read, so it was nice to see a narrative address the problem directly even if the approach was heavy handed.

If f/f hockey romances are your absolute jam, you might want to read Out on the Ice. However, because of the complete dissolution of tension for the last 40% and the degree to which I had to push myself to finish it, I can’t really recommend it and I won’t read it again.

– Tara

Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance

Well Played

author: Jen DeLuca

TW: Catfishing

It’s a bad sign when I look at my list of things to read and review for the month, and think to myself, “I need to read that book next,” and then realize that I’ve already read it. Well Played  did not leave a lasting mark upon me. It was an enjoyable book to read and it gave me the chance to attend a Renaissance Faire via imagination in a year when the real Faires are cancelled. This is a cosy romance with minimal conflict, which makes for comforting but not what I’d call riveting reading.

Well Played is the second book in the Well Met series and it works fine as a standalone, although reading the first book, Well Met, will give you a better sense of the small town in which the books are set and the personalities of the supporting characters.

Our heroine is Stacey. When Stacey’s mom got sick, Stacey dropped everything and came home to take care of her parents. Her mom is better now, but Stacey is afraid to move on in case her mom’s health relapses. Stacey has an uninspiring job, but loves her summer work for the local Renaissance Faire. Last summer Stacey had a purely physical fling with Dex, a musician who travels from Faire to Faire all year. On a whim Stacey writes him a letter, beginning a correspondence that seems to be leading to love, only to have to rethink everything when Faire season brings the letter writer back to her town.

This is a gentle and obvious Cyrano de Bergerac story with very little conflict. What could, and maybe should, be addressed as major catfishing is quickly forgiven. So much abuse is possible over social media that the idea of one person using another’s social media identity to win another’s affection and trust is much more creepy than in pre-internet versions of this trope (Cyrano de Bergerac  and Roxanne, for instance). It helps that the reader can figure out who the writer is immediately and that the grovelling, once the truth comes out, is extensive.

The book is more about Stacey’s development as a person than it is about romance, especially since we don’t know who the romance is with until at least two-thirds of the way through the book. Trust me, you can guess who it is one chapter in with ease, but OFFICIALLY the reveal comes later, and whatever, it’s fine, I’m sure they will be very happy together. For me, the big draw was the sense of community both in and out of the Renaissance Faire, and getting to see Stacey resolve her sense of being stuck in life.

– Carrie S

Contemporary Romance, Romance