**30 Books in 30 Days**
Book 3/30
This was a good time. I was really into it at the beginning, but then the tension sort of fizzled out near the middle. It had a pretty strong ending, though. I’m definitely going to check out later books in the series, because some of the summaries seem like they will be a little more angsty. This was mostly just bantery and fluffy and full of hockey stuff. I almost bumped it up to four stars, but that middle section did lag, and made the book read longer than its 242 pages.
I’ve actually had this one on my TBR for ages and ages, so I’m glad to finally get to clean it off my Kindle app. I’m not really a big sports in real life person, but I love sports in movies and books. There’s something about the inherent tension of the setting, along with the team dynamics that really appeals to me as a good place to set stories. (Thanks to faintingviolet I spent all of Saturday watching S1 Ted Lasso. Case in point,) I also really like when sports stories are combined with romance. This is a good one in that genre. I really liked how it set itself apart in a couple ways.
The biggest thing is that it’s not set in the NHL and the main characters aren’t hockey stars. They are professional hockey players in the ECHL, which is feeder league to the AHL, which is the minor league that feeds into the NHL. There’s a whole different set of stories to be told about players in a minor minor league team that just aren’t there in a big, fancy team. I also thought the author did a nice job using her two main characters as foils for one another. Jared is a nearly washed up thirty-two year old enforcer, a goon, who has never been able to make it out of the minors and is on the verge of retirement, and Lane is a fresh-faced up and comer everybody knows won’t stay in the minors for long.
This book also had really nice character stuff going for it. I liked all the secondary characters, and Gale is really good at elaborating on character through dialogue. I liked how she complicated the relationships between Jared and Lane and their parents; everything wasn’t black and white. As mentioned previously, the middle lost all tension for me, but otherwise I liked this. The next book is on Kindle Unlimited so I’ll probably check it out soon.
[3.5 stars]
CBR BINGO: Sportsball
