ARC, Books

Book 689: The Play of His Life – Amy Aislin

Geoff W

I honestly didn’t plan for April to be full of MM Romance novels, but that’s how the world works. Plus in this new world of coronavirus stay-at-homeness they’re the only thing I want to read. So in the words of Jonathan Van Ness, buckle up queen (YouTube video; watch the first 10-15 seconds) there are more to come after this, thanks to the library coming through on a few that have been on hold.

I read this as part of the Gay Romance Reviews publicity push for The Play of His Life‘s re-release later this month. I was intrigued when it landed in my inbox because I love second chance romances (oh hey Persuasion), and let’s face it MM romance sports stories are usually pretty hot and heavy. I did have some hesitations about accepting it because it is self-published, but it did come from a publicist rather than direct from the author so someone had to vet it at some point, so I figured why not?

Christian has flown back to his home town for the holidays and his mother has purposefully thrown him back in the path of his high school best friend/budding lover Riley, a now retired-from-injury NHL player. And the heat starts to build almost immediately. After breaking up during their long-distance relationship high school sweethearts Christian and Riley went their separate ways, but secretly continued to pine after each other and this is the story of their reconciliation.

The sex scenes were believable, in general, but for some reason the gratification of the scenes just wasn’t there. There was one scene where I’m still trying to figure out how something was physically possible the way it was described, but I think the issues I had with it came more from the writing than the action. They were a little bit rushed and not situational, who doesn’t love a quickie?  “Show don’t tell” keeps going through my head, but I’m not sure that was the problem either.

I think ultimately it boils down to the fact that Aislin’s writing just isn’t as strong as other MM romance authors I fanboy over (Qualls, Albert, and Suede in particular). It’s almost there and I honestly think Aislin can get there, but when I compare a quote like this,

“But instead, Christian leaned forward to take Riley’s mouth again. And this. This was the stuff first kisses were made of. This was less hunger, more passion. They slowed things down for this kiss. Hands petted and caressed rather than tugged and scratched. The scritch of Riley’s five o’clock shadow on Christian’s face made Christian shiver.” (Loc. 504)

to a quote like this, from Annabeth Albert’s Level Up (#gaymers #4)

“Unlike the handholding of his teen years, this was borderline erotic, Bailey’s thumb sweeping against his palm, fingers stroking knuckles, exploring calluses. A few minutes of sweet torture, and Landon was painfully hard. From holding hands. And it was nice because as much as his body wouldn’t have minded something more, it was a family movie, not an R-rated makeout flick.” (Loc. 631)

for some reason it’s just a couple degrees off. Albert is talking about hand holding and I’m fanning myself over here and Aislin is talking about kissing and I’m only vaguely interested.

“Riley may not play in the pros anymore, but he still had an incredible goalie butt.” (Loc. 380)

I laughed at the “goalie butt” reference, especially in the context of the viral “hockey butt” men’s trousers ad last year, because hello booty, but in general this wasn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as some others.

There also seemed to be some additional continuity and errors that weren’t caught in this re-release, which is weird because that’s one of the reasons it’s being re-released. In particular toward the end of the novel there’s a scene where Riley is woken in the middle of the night, it makes no reference of Christian being woken, but the start of the next chapter has Christian falling asleep because of a middle-of-the-night wake up call. I’m not sure if I missed something, but I definitely went back a few pages because it caught me off guard. I will say adding the epilogue was the right decision, which isn’t usually the case.

Recommendation: If MM romances and sports are your thing, then you could do a lot worse than read this. This is definitely one of the better self-published novels I’ve read so I definitely give the author and publicity team credit for that. Overall, the story was decent and I liked the characters, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of Aislin’s writing style. It started pretty early with the internal dialogue and I feel somehow impacted the sex scenes, making them a little less “Yes . . . Please!” and a little more “Alright, I guess, I’m in.” for some reason.

*I received a copy of The Play of His Life via Gay Romance Reviews in return for my honest opinion. No goods or money were exchanged.

Opening Line: “Now serving alcohol?”

Closing Line: “Riley’s eyes were glassy and when he spoke next, Christian had to blink the wetness out of his own eyes and swallow past the knot in his throat, ‘Welcome home.'” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from The Play of His Life
“Christian had a stack of Christmas and birthday presents for Riley at his apartment in Vancouver for every year they’d been apart since their break up. Because he was just humiliatingly pathetic enough that, even though they weren’t together—hell, they hadn’t even kept in touch—Christian had gone out to the store to purchase the perfect gift for Riley even though he might never see them. But that wasn’t the point. The point was . . . ” (Loc. 562)

“Being here with Riley, in his home—their home now—was surreal. he felt the stress of quitting his job, packing his belongings, selling his stuff, renting the apartment, just . . . fall away. It was crazy how everything they’d been through since they’d met in second grade had brought them here, to this point. Together again, still madly in love but still best friends too, sexual chemistry off the chart.” (Loc. 2,035)

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