Books

Book 997: Schooling the Jock (Nerds vs Jocks #1) – Eli Easton & Tara Lain

Book cover of "Schooling the Jock" with Amazon Affiliate linkAfter finishing The Hot Cannolis by Eli Easton and Tara Lain and knowing I didn’t want to jump into a more serious novel. I searched on Kindle Unlimited for a nerd/jock MM Romance and this series popped up. When I noticed the authors, there was no question about reading it so I dove right in.

Schooling the Jock is a twist on your classic enemies to lovers crossed with the nerd/jock trope and I am here for it. On the one hand, you’ve got Dobbs, the head of the university’s quiz bowl team who is openly gay and smart as hell, and on the other, you’ve got Jesse, the school’s prized running back (I think) who happens to be smart as hell and closeted.

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Books

Book 995: Ice Devils (Bethesda Barracudas #4) – Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood

Book cover of "Ice Devils" with Amazon Affiliate linkThis 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.

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Books

Book 994: Ice Angels (Bethesda Barracudas #3) – Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood

Book cover of "Ice Angels" with Amazon Affiliate linkIn 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.

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Books

Book 993: Fire in the Ice (Bethesda Barracudas #2) – 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.

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Books

Book 992: The New Next One (Bethesda Barracudas #1.5) – Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood

Book cover of "The New Next One" with Amazon Affiliate linkIf there is one book in this series that I am not happy with, it’s this one. Not because it’s poorly written or anything, it’s the same as all the others. I’m grumpy that Amazon doesn’t allow for half-books in their series listing resulting in me reading this thinking it was book two of the series when in reality it’s book 0.5 of the series that tells us Nick’s backstory.

Some of that is on me because I could’ve (and should’ve) looked at Goodreads to see the series’ order, but I didn’t. So, I just blazed into this one and then immediately was like wait WTF is happening?

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