This review covers books three through five of the Game Changers six book series.
Caveat – I learned everything I know about hockey from these books, movies, and from a single hockey match I watched in 2018. My apologies in advance.
Tough Guy
3 stars
“So, you want to tell us about that hockey lumberjack or what?”
“Hockey lumberjack?” Marcus asked, setting his phone on the coffee table facedown in a gesture of absolute interest in the conversation.
― Rachel Reid, Tough GuyHis whole life, Fabian had only known hockey to be a horrible, toxic thing that celebrated homophobic bullies and trained boys to believe there was only one acceptable way to be a man. Hockey was the wall that separated Fabian from his own family, the blueprint for masculinity that prevented his parents from understanding their only son. Fabian knew himself, and he knew he would never be a fan of the game, or the culture that surrounded it.
― Rachel Reid, Tough Guy
Ryan Price is the enforcer on The Guardians, Toronto’s NHL team. He is massive and scary and good at his job. He protects the other players and is called on to fight with other enforcers as part of the game. Ryan is good at his job but he has a tough time connecting with his teammates. He gets traded at least every other season. This forces him to become more withdrawn and more socially anxious with each transfer.
Ryan is gay and, while he doesn’t hide it, it is not something he shares with people outside of his close family and friend group. After getting traded to Toronto, he decides to get an apartment in the gay village in the hopes that he will naturally be compelled to go out and meet people.
When he runs into Fabian while stopping in the local CVS, he is shocked and pleased that Fabian remembers him. Fabian was his first real crush back in high school and he hasn’t seen him since. Fabian remembers him fondly as well since Ryan was the only high school hockey player his family hosted who wasn’t a hyper-masculine jock.
Ryan and Fabian start hanging out, despite Fabian’s clear dislike of hockey and hockey culture. Fabian is a musician and he is everything that Ryan is not: delicate, elegant, fashionable, flirty, confident, and an incredible artist. The more they get to know one another, the more Fabian resents how Ryan can keep doing his job even though it causes him immense psychological distress. Ryan cannot make Fabian understand that being intimidating on the ice is the only thing Ryan believes he can do.
This is a lovely story because Ryan is a big, soft sweetheart and Fabian is brilliant and fabulous. The sex is spicy, funny, and the slow build up to it really pays off. They are both insecure in their own ways, but they bring out the best in one another. I would read an entire book about Ryan and Fabian’s adventures as they travel throughout Canada between Fabian’s performances. This is a relatively low-angst romance with some incredible side characters.
Common Goal
2 stars
Eric is approaching the end of his career as a goalie for the New York Admirals hockey team. He is terrified of retirement. He and his wife of twenty-years split amicably, but Eric still wears his wedding ring for good luck. Many things in his life are changing so quickly, and he is worried that being forty, newly-divorced, and retired will leave him aimless and depressed.
Eric is bisexual, although he’s never dated a man. When he starts going to The Kingfisher, the gay bar where his teammate Scott’s fiance works, he meets Kyle. Kyle is a part-time grad student and friends with Kip. Kyle still pines for Kip even though Kip and Scott are getting married. Eric and Kyle get to know one another and Kyle comes up with a plan to help them both out of their funk. He will show Eric how to do the gay scene in New York, and Eric will help him get over his fruitless crush on Kip.
Kyle and Eric are the least interesting characters in this series, and that is probably why neither of them show up in subsequent books. This is a very, very low angst romance, mostly because the stakes are so low. The crux of their conflict – Eric’s ancient age of forty-one vs Kyle’s twenty-five – is a legitimate concern for Eric. But it is not enough to make an okay story interesting.
Role Model
3 stars
“I love dogs. I don’t have one now, but I want a house in the country someday and, like, five dogs. Big ones.”
“That’s a lot.”
“It’s exactly the right amount of dogs.”
― Rachel Reid, Role Model
This is a take on grumpy/sunshine. But instead of grumpy you get “fearful and ashamed” / sunshine.
Troy is closeted. Since starting his career, he became a macho, homophobic hockey player to fit in with his teammates and to protect himself. However, after accusations finally surfaced that Troy’s best friend, Dallas Kent, had assaulted multiple women, Troy stood up to him. Once the fans and the coaches found out, the team labeled Troy as “jealous and vindictive” and traded him to a low-performing team and rallied behind Dallas instead. On top of that, Troy’s secret, long-distance boyfriend dumped him for a reality TV star.
Now, after years of being Dallas’s best friend, he has to start over with a new team that thinks he is just like Dallas. Troy hates himself and decides to just power through the season until he can get traded to a better team. Lucky for him, a very cute, out, energetic ball of sunshine social media manager named Harris coaxes him out of his shell and teaches him to love again. Yes, it is cheesy but it is also sweet. While I’m not a huge fan of Troy, I think that is sort of the point. He is unlikeable and he is culpable for all of the shitty things he went along with in the past. Now, he is facing the repercussions and it is very, very hard for me to feel much sympathy for him. I’m glad he has some personal growth along the way, but his big transformation from scared bully to proud advocate didn’t sit well with me.
I had problems with this story. Once Troy realizes that he can actually support victims of sexual assault and related organizations by using his fame as a platform and by donating some of his hockey millions, he repeatedly gets congratulated for being an ally.
Hmmmmm…..
I appreciate that the book talks about how perpetrators are regularly protected and that victims are discredited and shamed. But one dude waking up after YEARS of being a rich, frightened asshole does not an ally make.
I’m still giving this book three stars because I love that Ilya and Harris play prominent roles in this story, and we get more Ryan and Fabian too!
Content warnings for mentions of sexual assault off the page.
