by Rachel Reid
First sentence: “Shane Holland was as close to losing it as he ever allowed himself to get.”
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Content: Oh. So much sex. So. Much. Every chapter, on page, lots and lots of sex. All the spice. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Shane Hollander is one of the best hockey players in the NHL. The only player who even comes close is Ilya Rozanov, who has been Shane’s nemesis since their rookie year. He has also, for better or worse, been Shane’s obsession. And his secret lover. What happens when their secret threatens to get out? Will it ruin their careers? Can they move their relationship into something more? (Do we care?)

Okay, yes, I picked this up because of the TV show and everyone is talking about it and I got curious. I am not proud of this decision. It is, objectively, by many measures (one being the couple of times they repeated entire paragraphs on the same page…) not a good book. This writing will not win awards. The chapters (for more than half of the book!) went hockey, sex, shame. We’re playing hockey against each other; we’re so angry and aroused. We have sex. But it’s bad to have sex with another man, we feel ashamed. For more than 100 pages. And yet, I kept reading.

Why? No idea. Except that I was still curious, and it wasn’t bad enough (or maybe it was the right kind of bad?) for me to put down. And the character development did happen somewhat in the second half of the book. Shane got a clue about his sexuality. Ilya stopped being Tough Russian Guy all the time. It’s never going to make my best-of list, and I do feel less intelligent for having read it, but I have to admit: my curiosity about the gay hockey thing is satiated.