Eric Bennett is a hockey goalie for the New York Admirals. He’s pushing forty and knows that the end of his career is coming, but he finds it hard to take the plunge. Recently divorced, he’s eager to explore the other side of the bisexual equation, so when he meets Kyle at a gay bar he’s game. But will the age gap get in the way?
I find it increasingly hard to write reviews of these books because they’re all the same. That’s not an issue; sometimes a girl wants the literary equivalent of a Quarter Pounder, which tastes roughly the same everywhere. You know what you’re going to get from the outset: hockey boy meets non-hockey or hockey-adjacent boy, they make doe-eyes, they do the do, there are some foibles and boom, happily ever after. The sex is mostly cute and very graphic and the characters are about as deep as you’d expect them to be (it doesn’t help that I always get Eric and Troy mixed up).
Either way, my pet theory is that people like Shane and Ilya best because they skip the whole will-they-or-won’t-they-bit; they’re two dumb, young and very horny guys when they meet and they start bumping uglies within weeks of meeting even with their incredibly busy schedules. So to see Eric and Kyle beat around the bush (“I’m too old for him!” “Why won’t the silver fox do me?”) is a bit of a drag.
Also, personally, I always feel like this series is a missed opportunity for a more in-depth look at homosexuality in professional sports, especially one as manly-male-macho as hockey. I know that that’s not their objective and that’s fine, but I’m always curious what a story like this would look like in the hands of a (younger, more athletically inclined equivalent of) Alan Hollinghurst. Perhaps the next book in the series (the as of yet unreleased Unrivaled) will dive into that a bit more, but I’m not holding my breath.
Aside from that, these books are fun if very samey, and I very much enjoy seeing other characters from the series pop up (Ilya’s a menace). It’s like slipping into a warm bath and forgetting the world for a bit.
