Scoring Position Hockey Ever After Book #2
Hockey Romance, Sports, Gay Roance, LGBTQ Fiction
Dreamspinner Press
Oct 18, 2022
Kindle
354
Amazon
Reviewed by Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Firstly, I want to state that I do not like sports and the one I like the least is hockey. I always said that it was a sport that you can watch for hours and nobody scores, how boring. Well, this book gave me a whole new perspective on the sport and the authors did a great job of describing some of the action which was exciting and encouraged me to try watching it live.
Ryan Wright plays in Montreal; he loves hockey but is a middling center and actually discovered he was traded to the Fuel in Indianapolis through the news. Finding out about his trade the way he did was shocking enough but to discover that he was traded to the Fuel because he was openly gay and their first-round pick, Nico Kirschbaum is too. Nico is not living up to expectations and Ryan has a reputation for firing up his team and now he is expected to befriend Nico and find out what is bothering him.
Nico is well aware of why the Fuel; General Manager traded for Ryan and refuses his friendship. Ryan is not happy about the situation leaving his home to babysit Nico but he is determined to wear Nico down and he is very persistent. In time Nico realizes he needs someone to talk to and it doesn’t hurt that he and Ryan begin to become close in more ways than one. Unfortunately, the Fuel continues to lose even as Nico begins to shine.
This is a book that anyone who loves hockey should definitely read. I did learn a lot about what happens behind the scenes and how easy it is to betray the team and the fans but I won’t say more about that. Nico and Ryan are wonderful characters but even with the acceptance of their being gay there is still a reluctance to be totally open in front of their teammates. My only criticism is that at times the book was slow moving.
DUAL REVIEW
REVIEW BY ULYSSES DIETZ
Once again, this hockey romance caught me in the technical intricacies of the game and offered up two wonderful young men to fall in love with. The authors have set this book several years after the action of the first in the series, and a few key players appear in this as well, binding the two stories together, but also reminding us of how different the situations are.
Ryan Wright is a good—not a great—Canadian hockey player, and feels fortunate to have been acquired by a highly unsuccessful team in Indianapolis called the Fuel. There, he is encouraged to mentor and befriend a potentially great hockey player who can’t seem to get out of his own way. Nicholai (Nico) Kirschbaum, a German player who’s just starting his career, is gay, but not so’s you’d notice. He is leery of this slightly older import from Vancouver, and mildly alarmed that one of the few other openly gay players in the NHL seems to have been “assigned” to him by management.
The friendship between these two young men is beautifully orchestrated, and we get to know them as they dance (skate?) around each other, trying to figure out the other’s angle. Once more, Kane and James have provided a cast of secondary characters who are memorable and appealing. Ryan’s family are only mildly interested in his career, while Nico’s parents are somewhat over-invested in his success. Cultural and social differences come into play, and even when we really know what’s going to happen (that’s MM for you), we don’t know HOW it’s going to happen. The authors keep us off balance and anxious until they don’t have to any more.
I loved these guys.