Well, that was brutal, by which I mean it was a long trip through the emotional wringer watching these two badly damaged men find their way. I was going to say "find their way out of the traps they're in," only I have a very bad feeling about their long-term prospects.

Not their prospects as a couple, I mean: By the end of the book, Mike has expanded his emotional repertoire far beyond the directionless rage and very directed self-hatred he starts out with; also, Danny has helped him achieve his potential as a hockey player. For his part, Mike has coaxed Danny back into contact with his family and gotten him closer to where he can stop destroying himself with Percocet and alcohol and playing through injury; at the end, Danny puts the brakes on his downward spiral.

Enemies-to-lovers transformation is tricky to pull off when the hostility isn't just a matter of MC2 taking MC1's lunch out of the office fridge. These two start out violent and for a long time they stay violent, fighting whenever they meet on the ice even after their personal enmity has evaporated. The sex is rough from the start, and rough is how it stays, though the roughness slowly alchemizes into a means of tenderness. (I thought about tagging this for BDSM, because once Mike and Danny begin to acknowledge that they're not just hate-fucking, the hitting and biting and bruising take on that trustful, physically cathartic quality I associate with BDSM. I'm not sure why it seems different and I might yet add the tag.) The increments by which they progress out of mutual assured destruction are so minute that I believed them, which is something to say.

Why, then, have a bad feeling about their long-term prospects? One word: concussion. For any reader halfway paying attention to (1) Danny's history (2) the news about repeated head injuries among football and hockey players, it's no spoiler to say that I finished Game Misconduct loving Danny and Mike, and very, very worried about the medical future.

The close third-person narration alternates points of view; for Mike, in particular, the structure of the prose reflects his constricted emotionality and broken-off -- well, you can't even call them "broken-off insights," because it takes Mike a good while to get as far as having even a broken-off insight:

"What the fuck was wrong with him? His brain kept replaying everything. Going down on his knees. He didn’t know why the fuck he’d done that. Why he’d said that. Like: he didn’t like owing people, it was true. But Garcia was an asshole and Mike didn’t have to…

"It had been really fucking good, and that was worse. He felt like he was going to rip his entire fucking skin off and he didn’t know why."

Or this snippet that comes out of Mike's mouth: “But like— the person you want to fuck— like— what do you do when there’s something, you know, going on with them and you don’t know what it is?” This is him already having taken baby steps toward understanding himself, mind you.

Game Misconduct is a terrific book, exquisitely painful; I can't recommend it highly enough but do brace yourself. I don't think there's a list of content notes, but the descriptive copy makes it pretty obvious what kind of ride readers are in for. I expect I'll be thinking about it for a good while: a love story that ends with the MCs believably together for the long haul and that nevertheless has potential for tragedy built in.

4.25

Well, this was absolutely gripping.
Angst-filled, tough and complex, "Game Misconduct" stole my heart; and Mike Sato stole my soul.

This isn't a light-hearted read: Mike and Danny's romance, their road to a much-deserved HEA (although, I admit, it's more of a HFN), is filled with rage and doubt and pain and addiction, but it's also fueled by care and deep, wonderful, helpless affection and the joy of slowly discovering one another after years of rivalry and violence.

There's nothing I love more than enemies to lovers, and since I absolutely adore hockey romances, I knew (and I hoped) I was going to love their story from the very first chapter.
Mike and Danny's relationship wasn't easy, and their whole dynamic was volatile from the very start: don't go into this book expecting sweetness, because these two, at least in the beginning, have an obsessive, toxic dynamic; and yeah, punching and slapping each other is their own form of foreplay.
To be fair, the (non-negotiated) kinky aspect of their relationship stays rough and violent, but it's also intersected by the love and affection they slowly develop for one another.
Needless to say, they were absolutely explosive together and I loved them, so much.
And actually, their romance does get sweeter and softer, and that is solely down to the utter gem, the disastrous, precious boy, that is Mike Sato.

Mike Sato stole my heart and soul: he's angry and hurt and confused and unsure, but he's also so damn sweet and eager and needy and starved for affection that I literally wanted to jump into the book and cuddle him to death. He's so unexpectedly sweet and unsure and soft at times, so damn thoughtful, I kept myself from sobbing through sheer will. His character growth was exceptional: I have to applaud the author for how they handled Mike, and his wonderful growth throughout the book.
So yeah, I loved Mike to bits, and I also thought, maybe uncharitably, that he deserved better than what he got. Or at least, he deserved a good ol' grovel from Danny near the end.

So yeah, while I did love Mike and I did love Danny in the beginning, after a bit I got really frustrated with how Danny was acting. I know, addiction isn't easy; I know, he was going through hell and he was in constant pain. I know I'm being unreasonable here, but still!
I think that's the reason I can't give this book the full five stars it would have easily deserved. I think I kept expecting them to reach a breaking point or, in the very least, a third act break-up: yes, I know, I shocked myself too. I usually don't like them, but I feel like it would have been justified here and it would have made Danny and Mike's HEA much more sweeter and definitive. And yeah, a grovel scene would have been welcome too. I kept waiting for something like that, so I was disappointed there wasn't.

Anyway, apart from this minor thing, I loved this book and I absolutely adored the writing: it's relentless and emotional and vivid.
I also loved the side characters to bits: from Bee to Celi, to all their other teammates. I'm very excited to see if there will be another book of Ari Baran's about certain two oblivious, BFF teammates: I sincerely hope so.
In the meantime, I thoroughly recommend this book: it was wonderful.


TWs/CWs: alcoholism, drug abuse, injury, rough sex, suicidal thoughts, SA (brief description), homophobia and racism (mentioned).

For a book where I really liked both of the main characters, I had a lot of qualms about this one.

What didn't work for me:

I didn't love the resolution of the story - it felt too fast and we didn't actually get to see the characters do the work to get get there, especially after spending the whole book watching one of them fall all the way down to rock bottom.
The POV made the narrative a little tough to follow
I didn't feel like we got to know either character deeply enough in the time we spent with them.
I don't know that the depth of trauma that was presented was handled in a particularly delicate way?

What did work for me;

Loved that we actually got to see these hockey players playing hockey
Loved the contrast between the parts that were sweet and the parts that were rough
I felt like there was some growth in the characters as they got closer and brought good things out in each other just by simply being there and accepting each other and that aspect of their relationship did feel healthy.

DNF . I did not like the fact that the sex was brutal. I don’t have an issue with BDSM books being aggressive after a conversation, but no real discussion between them was not cool.

This one was a little heavy for me but also a nice introduction to an new author that I will check back in on.

Enemies-to-lovers age-gap hockey romance, what’s not to like, right? Well, there was quite a lot I liked with this. But there were also some things that really, really did not work for me. To the extent that I got quite upset, actually. So this is a very mixed bag, to put it lightly, and I’m not quite sure how to go about rating it. I ended up being quite invested in this book – I had a hard time putting it down – but not always in the best of ways.

I think that the intensity of my reaction has to do with the fact that my expectations were completely miscalibrated going into this. So this review is more an expectations-setting exercise for other readers so that they don’t experience the whiplash I did. I’m not putting any spoilers in here, but I will talk about character arcs and issues in a general way, so if you want to go in completely fresh, best peace out of the review here.
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Basically, the blurb is . . . not misleading, per se, but utterly insufficient. This book should have content warnings for depression; suicidal ideation; alcohol and prescription painkiller addiction; on-ice violence; off-ice violence; rough sex involving violence that is not discussed or negotiated beforehand, and where consent is assumed but almost never verbalized; unrecognized sub drop; homophobia (countered); and multiple concussions (previous and on-page). This is a very heavy book, and while it ends with an HEA (really more of an HFN), we don’t get there until literally the last couple of pages -- with a quite abrupt ending that, for me, wasn’t sufficient to calm the sense of unease and dread about Danny’s mental and physical health that was (very effectively) built up over the course of the book. I had gone into this expecting a fun, flirty, dirty hockey romance, and nothing in the blurb led me to believe otherwise. What I got was two damaged, to a large degree traumatized MCs who stumble into what turns out to be quite a touching romance, but whose trajectories are so completely opposite that it feels like reading two separate and hard-to-reconcile stories.

Enemies-to-lovers isn’t even really accurate. Danny, the vet, the old-fashioned enforcer, really has no grudge against or feelings about Mike one way or the other at the start: fighting Mike is just like fighting any other upstart trying to prove himself. Mike holds a grudge against Danny after having fought him (and lost) during his first NHL game, but Danny is really a placeholder for Mike’s self-directed anger and hate. The thing is, we never really get a handle on why Mike is so freaking angry and self-sabotaging and self-hating. We get a bit of backstory, but to me, it was insufficient to account for this long-standing rage and self-destructive behavior that Mike carries with him (directed both inward and outward) the first third of the story. Which made Mike a somewhat hard character to like, at least at first. He was just an anger machine, but there wasn’t much to hold onto other than that. That said, Mike’s trajectory is a really good one. The benefit of the enemies-to-lovers trope is that, in the enemies phase, the MCs can speak the unvarnished truth to each other without worrying about (indeed, with the intent of) hurting the other’s feelings, and so it is here: Danny serves up some truth about Mike’s game and pointless self-sabotaging, and once Mike actually starts taking it onboard and working on himself, he turns into a much more sympathetic, enjoyable character. From being a confused rage vessel, Mike turns into a character that it’s fun to root for – making strides not just in hockey terms, but also making himself much more emotionally available in his relationships with friends and family.

As Mike is on the way up, Danny is deteriorating. He keeps his physical pain in check by self-medicating with excessive amounts of booze and pills. He also self-isolates from family and friends, although we do get an arc of him taking more of a mentorship role with younger teammates, echoing the role he’s taken on for Mike. At one point quite late in the book, Danny admits to himself that he is suffering from depression, but he resolutely resists any attempts by Mike or others to help him; indeed, he is convinced that he doesn’t deserve any help. I think this is probably a realistic representation of the damaging spiral that depression can cause, but it’s also pretty heavy and frustrating for the reader to have an MC who is stuck in this pattern for a large chunk of the book (and again – the ending is so abrupt that we get reference to, but never see, him seeking help for his addiction and mental health, which makes it hard for me to buy the “now everything is great” conclusion). The fact that I really liked Danny as a character is what made this really hard to read: I felt sorry for him, I felt frustrated by him, I felt worried about his health and his choices, but mostly I didn’t feel convinced that it would so easily work out because while we saw the trauma on the page, we didn’t see the healing on the page. Which is not how I like to feel at the end of a romance.

Given the way it started, Mike and Danny’s relationship turned out to be surprisingly sweet. However, the sex scenes are doing a lot of work. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and to some degree is built into the enemies-to-lovers trope, where the physical connection is what brings them together in the first place. But the challenge here is that Mike and Danny are long distance, so we get lots of phone sex and lots of together-sex when they are in the same place, but not as much actual talking or non-sex-related togetherness. We get text messages and that kind of thing, but there’s also a lot of vague references to conversations and (remote) interactions that we never see, and a fair amount of “one MC worrying about the other MC in his own POV but never actually articulating that when they talk”. All this to say: I liked the way the romance developed from conflictual-physical to caring-intimate, but I would have liked more non-sex-related bonding and relationship stuff, as on balance I think the sex scenes were too much and too overloaded.

A couple of other points that are kind of me-things, but worth naming all the same. One is the concussion issue. I say this is a me-thing because I have long been annoyed at how some authors treat concussions or head injuries as little more than a bump on the head and minor nuisance (this applies at least as much to romantic suspense as sport romance – Gregory Ashe, Kaje Harper, and Josh Lanyon are all authors who, at least in earlier work, give their characters concussions and then have them chasing bad guys two pages later, and it drives me round the bend). And my recent reading has pushed this existing irritation to borderline trigger level (post-TOTI stress syndrome). The thing is – I don’t think that underplaying the danger of concussions is actually what the author is trying to do. BUT both Mike and Danny are written as having extremely dismissive attitudes towards concussions and head trauma, at least at the beginning of the book (and Danny throughout), and while I think the author is using this as a sign of Mike and Danny’s self-destructive tendencies, it is written in a way that we, the reader, are internalizing this point of view. The flippancy with which both characters refer to and deal with concussions is not sufficiently countered until the very end, and by then it felt like too little, too late. I found the whole thing really upsetting to read, and I think this issue should have been handled with more care.

The other thing that didn’t work for me at all was Bee. Which. OK. I am not knowledgeable about hockey. (Hockey romance, yes. Hockey, no.) But having a woman not just playing in the NHL but on the first line, and winning the Calder Cup, and winning all the skills competitions at the All-Star game, etc? No. Sorry, I just don’t buy it. Woman in the NHL, great. But make her a goalie! Something plausible. (There has, in fact, been a woman goalie in the NHL. A round of applause for Manon Rhéaume, who wikipedia tells me is the first and, I believe, heretofore only woman to play in the NHL and still works professionally in hockey.) I know that there are many excellent women hockey players, but just in terms of the sheer physicality, the idea of a woman first-liner on an NHL team, much less one who’s better than all the other NHL stars, is implausible. I feel like a traitor to the sisterhood here, but . . . no. This kicked me out of the story every bloody time it came up, like I kept having to constantly refresh my suspension of disbelief and it was exhausting. And the thing is, I liked Bee! She was a great character, and I loved how she supported Mike without being all up in his business all the time. Make her the goalie, and I would have been 100 percent onboard with Bee. But just . . . no. Because by doing this, the author is basically putting us in the position of either doubting their knowledge (do they really think this is realistic?) or doubting the level we're supposed to read this on (just how AU is this?). Because if you go into a sports romance knowing it's set in a slightly alternate universe where, for example, out gay players are commonplace and accepted in men's professional sport, then you can set your brain to "slightly alternate universe" space. In this case, this isn't the space the rest of the story is set in, which makes the Bee thing throw it out of whack.

And finally, a question: is it really a hockey romance if the author doesn’t mention at least once how the hockey dudes have to get their gameday suits specially tailored in order to fit their amazing hockey asses and hockey thighs? And how smoking hot/ genteel-thuggy they all look in the aforementioned suits? The answer, my friends, is “apparently”, because there are no gameday suits in this hockey romance!!! What is even the point of a hockey romance if there are no gameday suits? We can’t be having these dudes just strolling out in sweats and leather jackets!! Then they’re just thuggy-thuggy, not genteel-thuggy! If Bee hadn’t already broken my disbelief-suspender, this would have. I feel robbed!

All in all, a mixed bag. I think I would have enjoyed this significantly more if I knew what I was getting into – so if you’ve read all the way to the end of this review, hopefully you’ll have your expectations more managed than mine were. And I think this is a promising debut – the author writes well, has a way with characters, and I thought the evolution of Mike and Danny’s relationship was convincingly done. I could definitely see myself reading a book 2, especially now that I know in advance that I just have to see past the Bee issue. But the things that didn’t work for me here really didn’t work for me, leaving me feeling more unsettled than contented at the end. Balancing out the good with the bad with 3 stars, but – just know what you’re getting into.

Mike Sato is angry, one-note angry. Period. He's an undersized D-man with a huge attitude and he's resigned himself to being a goon, especially when it comes to his on-ice nemesis, Danny - an opposing D-man. As in they bust teeth, bloody noses, fight every time they meet during a game. It's almost pathological on Mike's part while Danny hopes just to survive a few more seasons before retiring and he seems very disengaged while on the ice, and off-ice as well.

Until the night they meet in a dark alley, which suddenly turns to sex. What follows is a mostly long-distance relationship of sorts with Mike and Danny having violent sex when they meet on the road, and texting in between. Not sweet nothings, unless you count 'asshole' as an endearment.

Danny is sort of estranged from his family for reasons not really explained. He lives in a fog for other undeveloped reasons. Mike doesn't get along with his family and seems to allow anger to be his primary response and emotion. Maybe it was just me, but I never felt that I understood much about either character and while we are given some minor background about them, they never feel fully fleshed out. I absolutely accept that other readers may feel differently.

I enjoyed the hockey universe the author creates, and there seems to be some interesting relationships there that I hope the author will explore in future books. And as Danny finally addresses his addiction in the closing pages of this book, I hope we get to see the next chapter of his life, and his life with Mike. 3.5 stars.

Not every romance needs to have a giant, preachy subplot. This one about substance abuse. A serious subject framed by a light romance drags the action down. It's much more interesting if characters have character rather than a checklist of Conflict Creating Personality Traits.

Game Misconduct is one of those romances that made me feel just a bit insane on finishing it. For a good week after reaching the end, I couldn’t last a few hours not thinking about it. Every time I tried to read another book, particularly when I tried to read another romance, it was automatically organised into the category of “not Game Misconduct” and, therefore, not as good.

I’m still not even sure I’m past that stage, but the immediate desire to reread has abated at least a little (although I feel like writing this review is going to make it come back with a vengeance).

The story follows two rival enforcers, Mike Sato and Danny Garcia. They’re on opposing teams (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, iykyk) and hate each other. Or at least, Mike hates Danny with a passion. The feeling is not entirely reciprocated. But then a chance meeting in a Philadelphia alleyway leads to just a few complications in that relationship.

The key thing about any romance is that you like the characters, both separately and together, and that you can believe in their relationship. That you’re rooting for them, basically. And boy do you root for Mike and Danny. Their relationship is so incredibly compelling in a way that’s hard to describe. There are so few authors I’ve read who’ve captured my attention quite so completely, quite so early on in the book. There are regular openings to books, and then there’s this, an opening scene that quite literally takes your breath away.

From then on, the trajectory of the book is pretty much as expected. Except, unlike a lot of romances I’ve read where the sex has started early, this one still maintains a level of tension between the two mcs. Every interaction they have is still so charged, you almost feel uncomfortable watching it. And yet, your eyes remain glued to the page because you have to find out how it pans out, so desperately. That really sums up this entire book to me: you want to devour it just as much as you want to savour it. You can’t put it down but you don’t want it to end.

This book also contains what feels like a rarity: no third-act break-up. Now, I’ve probably long made clear my feelings on those, namely, they only work if they make sense with the characters’ personalities as established and that’s rarely the case. So when this one didn’t have a third-act break-up (which, to be clear, made total sense because there’s no way Mike would have let Danny be that stupid), it made me love it even more. Not least because I find senseless third-act break-ups fall into two categories: “wow that’s so stupid just talk will you” and “how the hell do you forgive that so easily”. This book had none of that, just two characters whose relationship with each other was the catalyst for their individual growth and understanding.

I don’t think I’m going to read a better romance than this all year, all said. At least not until the sequel comes out in however many months time (sob). I guess all that’s left for me until then is copious numbers of rereads…

Attention everyone! NEW FAVE JUST DROPPED. (Okay technically, new fave drops in May.) You know when you read the first book in a romance series and not only is it chef’s kiss perfection but you can just see all the other books’ possible storylines unfurl in front of you, a yellow brick road of hot lovable hockey player potential? That’s what reading this book was like. A new universe opened before me, and it was good.

Okay here’s the situation… enemies-to-lovers hockey romance is the best genre ever. EVER ever. (Okay, enemies-to-lovers gay hockey romance is tied with lesbian vampire noir for the best genre ever. I will not be taking questions.) And please do not confuse enemies-to-lovers with rivals-to-lovers, I loved Heated Rivalry too but that is a different vibe!! Give me enemies or give me nothing imo. (You can quote me on that!! But actually, please give me other things also, a series cannot be built on enemies-to-lovers alone and I will gladly consume whatever tropes will be on offer in the future as well!! No as far as I can tell no other books have been announced in connection with this one but you cannot simply give me two side characters dressing up as Captain America and the Winter Soldier for Halloween and leave it at that!! Carina Press are you listening!!!)

Please note I will NOT be describing the characters or summarizing the plot, I am exercising my reviewer’s prerogative to tell you nothing except that this book is INCREDIBLE. Yes, there is a fistfight immediately followed by angry sex in an alley at 3%!!!! That is all you should need to know!!! Drop everything else!!!

Aside (subtitle: a paean to the cover) - is this, or is this, the greatest cover of all time… yes it is. The orangey-pink font, the black and white photo, the hoodie, the hand positioning, the head slightly tilted back…!! It’s got it all. This is more or less how cool I imagine I look when I lean back against a subway seat, please never tell me if I’m wrong about that as I would prefer to live in cool ignorance.

Drop everything!! Read this book!!

I was drawn to this because I love a good hockey romance!!
The concept was just my kind of thing, enemies to lovers in sports!! There was some good representation and I really liked the characters and couple.
Unfortunately, I found the writing style just really hard to get into and that’s such a big thing for me. It will probably work for others but didn’t quite live up to other hockey romance stories I’ve enjoyed recently.

I actually quite enjoyed this book. I was a little worried in the middle when I was 30% into the book and still in the second chapter, but aside from that and a few other chapters that were just way too long, I really liked this. Definitely the more I read, the more invested I was and by the time I reached the end, I was really into it.

I also loved that this version of the NHL has at least one female player.

DRC provided by Carina Press & Carina Adores (Harlequin), Carina Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Baran's debut about two queer hockey players was extremely engaging and absolutely astonishing.

This made it's way onto my Netgalley shelf and I downloaded it and read it in the course of two days. Definitely some kind of record!

"enforcer' = used synonymously with "fighter", "tough guy", or "goon". An enforcer's job is to deter and respond to dirty or violent play by the opposition. When such play occurs, the enforcer is expected to respond aggressively, by fighting or checking the offender. Enforcers are expected to react particularly harshly to violence against star players or goalies. Enforcers will often be used as specialists in attack of defense.

Game Misconduct is angsty, I have to say.

Mike is a young (25) enforcer who usually plays on the third line. He's a bit smaller than other defenseman but makes up for it in sheer grit, toughness, and commitment to taking on the biggest and meanest. Danny is a stalwart at 35 -battle weary, and bearing the scars of his profession. When Mike and Danny are pitted against each other, it's fire and fury, cuts, bruises, and lost teeth.

This book takes Mike and Danny's story off-ice when a chance encounter yields an unexpected outcome. Neither know what to make of it and they begin corresponding, facetiming and well ... getting to know one another.

This book is heavily laden with hockey - both games and talk, but it is much more than that. There's underlying themes of machoism, what it is to "be" a man, expectations about playing on despite significant injury, the isolation players experience, and the recognition (or lack there-off) of mental health issues, drug and alcohol addiction, and post-career transition planning. Thrown into this mix are two characters from diverse cultures, their familial expectations, and divergent lifestories. Danny also serves as a mentor of sorts to Mike (initially this is unwelcome), encouraging him to be the best player he can be.

The outcome is an emotional read. As I said, it's angsty. There is a strong emphasis on physical violence (both on and off the ice). It's present in Mike and Danny's most intimate moments (could be quite confronting for some readers). Their relationship is challenged given their competing priorities and demands, and the reader witness their developing through texts, messages, facetimes and telephone calls in between their occasional face to face encounters. Each has a small support system as both experience fracture in their families of origin and they are a varied, robust group of characters. Mike's support group is more active and involved than Danny's, given Danny's choice of social isolation.

It's a reasonably lengthy book but there are some aspects that occur off the page, such as some of the early conversations that progress Mike and Danny's relationship. There are times when the communication between these two is lacking, although their feelings about one another for me were fairly clear - their attraction, their overriding thoughts about one another, and the palpable relief they felt when they were together. The addressing of Danny's issues was probably addressed too quickly for me, given the long standing nature of his addiction, and I thought more could have been made of his converting realisation into action for change. I also wanted to explore their individual family issues and how these were addressed that brought both characters to where we saw them in the Epilogue.

Game Misconduct was an intense read and a great start to this duology. I believe it's a debut, and I can't wait to see what is in store for the sequel.

Thanks to Carina Press and Netgalley!

I expected a smidge of darkness considering this book is about rival hockey players who beat each other up every time the get a chance but this was darker than that even.

Mike and Danny are defensemen and are both honestly kind of over fighting on the ice but always make a special effort to beat each other up on the ice. They end up bringing this energy over to their off ice encounters and everything is just as explosive there. Danny is just so out of it for reasons I'll get to and Mike helps bring some life to him. Watching Mike grow the heck up throughout the book was lovely too.

I want to applaud Ari Baran for making a choice especially with a debut novel. Danny is hardcore down an addiction spiral for the entire book and instead of the power of love bringing them out of it which always makes me roll my eyes, a choice was made for Danny to actually listen to the fears everyone has shared with him about his health and do something about it. He spends a chunk of the book blowing everyone off and saying it's not so bad but it really, really was. He goes to rehab and moves forward.

I'm hoping the next book I see from Ari has Singer and Reed. Those two seem like a codependent mess and I need it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Carina Press for a copy in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are my own.

Well. This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2023. I really like Ari, so I’m heartbroken to say that I didn’t love this at all. Actually, much of the time I was really frustrated. I had to make myself keep reading.

It started off super wild right from the start. These dudes are serious rivals. Like fighting on the ice every time they play each other. Losing teeth during the fights they’re so bad. It was hard to see how they go from that to hooking up. And much of the progression of their relationship was off page. We were told about it, not shown. Told they had FaceTimes and phone calls. But I wanted to see this? But instead we went from bitter rivals to friends that hook up with pet names to lovers? It was just hard to believe their relationship.

This reminded me a lot of thrown off the ice. In writing style but also in how Danny acts. Just uncaring about his body. He cared more about playing hockey then like being able to live once he retired.

Also these guys were just … so frustrating. Especially Danny. They’re both admitted assholes although Mike was a softie at heart in my opinion. They sucked at communicating. I got so tired of them almost admitting their feelings and then not doing it. Lots of “dudes” that got a bit exhausting. Ari mentioned found family in a few of their promotional graphics but I didn’t see it here. Danny’s teammates were featured a few times but only when it was necessary for plot development so I never really got to know them.

Their sex was violent. One of the CW’s is undernegotiated kink. While I agree I would also caution that it’s violent sex. Slapping and biting and punching during sex. All consensual but it was jarring at times as a reader. And one of the characters vaguely mentions previous SA, but as these guys often did it was just … not talked about in depth. These dudes just don’t really talk lol. It got so frustrating.

During the course of the novel one of the characters struggles with alcohol and drug abuse. The entire novel. There’s no relief or help until the end. So the ending was very … unsatisfactory to me. Not enough closure for these dudes.

Anyway… I struggled with the romance. So, I can’t rate it four stars even though I really wanted to since it’s a debut. I just had too many complaints as you can see from my review. BUT… I did like it enough to rate it there stars. There were enough sweet moments where they really did try to take care of one another. Visiting one another during the season. At one point one of them gets a private hotel suite and gets the other flowers. These dudes tried sometimes lol.