A life of books . . .
Yes—I accidentally read these out of order. I didn’t realize Winging It was the first in the series and only figured it out 1/3 of the way through Scoring Position so of course I immediately had to download the first and start it right after.
Overall, this series was good, and these first two books were well written, and the stories were engaging, but OMFG they were all entirely way too long, or not well paced. More on that later.
So, if we’ve learned anything over 13 years of blogging, I enjoy most MM Romances tropes, but for some reason this past year I’ve been obsessed with hockey/figure skating romances. I don’t know why, maybe it’s that I’ve finally acclimated to New England, but they are just giving me life these days. This is the sixth one I’ve read in 2023 and I have at least 2-3 more coming before the calendar turns (but reviews won’t appear until early 2024).
Continue reading “Book 1,010: The Inside Edge – Ashlyn Kane”
This was my least favorite novel of the series.
Some of that comes from reading the books back-to-back with no break in between, but more of it comes from the two characters and choices made by Taylor and Harwood that just really bothered me. That being said, kudos to them for including their first non-white protagonist.
Ice Devils Is the story of Blake Conti and Mark “Sako” Sakamoto. Conti is out and proud and Sako is so deep in the closet that it’s painful to read. Seriously, like I get the closet, it worked in many of the other books, but don’t make your first minority protagonist have more issues than any other character. It’s not a good look.
Continue reading “Book 995: Ice Devils (Bethesda Barracudas #4) – Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood”
In this book, we find out that not only is Drew, a captain of an opposition team, gay and has been for the entire series (we met him in The New Next One) but he’s been in a long-term committed relationship with Cleeves, another forward from the Bethesda Barracuda, for most of the series!?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad we didn’t know because everyone comes out in their own timeframe, but I was a little like wait what going into this one!? There were quite a few flashbacks, but most of the novel was spent with Drew and Cleeves trying to figure out how they could be together when their teams were halfway across the country and their travel schedules were always in opposition.
Continue reading “Book 994: Ice Angels (Bethesda Barracudas #3) – Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood”
For book two (or book three if you believe Amazon and not Goodreads) we get to revisit Nick’s (from Nice Catching You first love, Tyler. He’s a winger/forward and has recently been traded to the Bethesda Barracudas where he’s come face-to-face with their younger teammate from high school, Kevin, a big beefy openly gay defenseman who has had a crush on Tyler since high school.
The story starts with Kevin and Tyler at each others’ throats. Even though they’re both openly gay (Tyler had a scandal where he got caught hooking up at a club at his last team) rather than being friendly they’re constantly trying to one-up each other and grind the other one down.
Continue reading “Book 993: Fire in the Ice (Bethesda Barracudas #2) – Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood”