Hey, everyone! It’s Wednesday! We’re kicking things off with a serious story, as an FYI. Definitely heed Sarah’s warning. I honestly can’t remember what has happened since last time. My home office is getting set up and I’m loving it. I have a pink candy jar with a ghost wearing a cowboy hat on top. I am going full on dopamine decor and I couldn’t be happier. I also bought organizers for my craft supplies … Continue reading Links: Cats, Rachel Reid, & More
I read this book in a day. A delicious day. A work day! In between meetings and emails I was reading this book. (Sorry, boss.) Landon Stackhouse, a hockey goaltender, has been called up from the Calgary farm team to play in the NHL as a backup goalie due to an injury. He’s riddled with anxiety in so many ways and tends to stick to himself. Casey Hicks, a star winger on the team, isn’t … Continue reading Time to Shine by Rachel Reid
The Long Game is the sequel to Heated Rivalry, the rivals-to-lovers hockey romance that pairs Ilya, an infuriating Russian, with his hockey nemesis, sunny Shane. Heated Rivalry has a permanent home on my keeper shelf, but the book ends with a HFN. I was dying to revisit these two and see them have a more permanent HEA. Unfortunately, I had three main issues with this book–Shane is a dick for most of it; the homophobia … Continue reading The Long Game by Rachel Reid
I love Rachel Reid’s work, particularly this series. I’ve reviewed Common Goal and read a couple others in the Gamechangers series. I’m delighted to report that this book was lovely while I read it. I devoured it in a single sitting and I smiled goofily while reading it, but as soon as the book was complete, I all but forgot about it. And sometimes that’s exactly what I want from a book: a few glorious hours … Continue reading Role Model by 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 … Continue reading Common Goal by Rachel Reid
This piece of literary mayhem is exclusive to Smart Bitches After Dark, but fret not. If you’d like to join, we’d love to have you! Have a look at our membership options, and come join the fun! If you want to have a little extra fun, be a little more yourself, and be part of keeping the site open for everyone in the future, we can’t wait to see you in our new subscription-based section … Continue reading News Bites, Feb 2-6 2026: Cancellations and Endings
This year is coming to a close! Here’s what we’re reading during the last week of December: Lara: I’m catching up with Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series. I’m currently reading Archangel’s Lineage. I’m desperately sad that this series will be coming to an end in May. It’s been a stalwart comfort for years. Amanda: My Romance TBR Takedown board had me landing on “new series.” I’m starting my Alice Coldbreath journey with Her Baseborn Bridegroom, … Continue reading Whatcha Reading? December 2025, Part Two
So right now I have a number of non-romance community friends coming up to me and saying stuff like: “Oh hey sounds like some hockey fic finally made it onto TV, huh?” “Yo Candy have you heard of the gay hockey romance TV show?” “How excited are you about the gay hockey smut on TV?” “Candy why is your entire Tumblr dashboard filled with naked asses?” To which I say: excuse me, these are not … Continue reading Heated Rivalry: The Unbearable Lightness of Having a Dump-Truck Ass
Smart Bitches started as a review blog, and we are still going. We’ve published more than three thousand reviews since 2005, and we wanted to share some of our favorites. Choosing only a few has been really challenging, because we all have many favorites. We wanted to talk about reviews we were proud of and that we thought were memorable. I asked Amanda what reviews she thought I should include and she rattled off, like, … Continue reading Twenty Years of Smart Bitches Reviews
Kim is a longtime SBTB reader. She writes boring professional documents by day to fund her ever-growing TBR pile, which is currently overflowing with T. Kingfisher, mystery thrillers, and MM romance. Everything she knows about hockey, she learned from queer love stories or the Mighty Ducks franchise. … Recently, I’ve been on an M/M hockey romance binge (and let me just say “queer romance” + “professional hockey” is the Reese’s “you got your peanut butter … Continue reading Season’s Change by Cait Nary
