Surprising and funny and ridiculous and frustrating and devastating in equal measure, Thrown Off the Ice is engrossing from start to finish. Told almost exclusively in Mike’s limited third person, present tense PoV (which took me several chapters to get used to), Thrown Off the Ice chronicles the relationship between Mike and Liam from that first shared season until the novel concludes more than a dozen years later. He tells Liam to keep away and find someone else, but his half-hearted attempts to rebuff Liam fail. But Liam is relentless, and despite Mike’s protestations to the contrary, he’s attracted to him. He’s kept his own bisexuality under wraps for years, and he not-so-subtly tries to signal Liam to do the same. Mike isn’t looking for a relationship, especially not with a young and immature teammate. It isn’t long before Liam begins to awkwardly flirt with him, whining when Mike appears immune to his charms.
His apparent ambivalence doesn’t deter the rookie in fact, it only seems to encourage him. Mike, who mostly keeps to himself and likes it that way, isn’t sure why Liam is so eager to spend time with him, and he mostly just tolerates Liam’s attention. When Thrown Off the Ice begins, he’s become a reluctant mentor of sorts to a young and talented new player on the team, Liam. (If you aren’t super familiar with hockey, enforcers use their size – and fists, when necessary – to deter opponents from messing with their teammates, especially marquis players). Mike is a veteran hockey player and enforcer for a fictional NHL team, nearing the end of his career. Raw and painful, mesmerizing and beautiful… Thrown Off the Ice might be the best book I read this year. Six months later and I’m still blown away. I can’t say I loved it while I was reading it – the story is alternately sweet and challenging and frustrating – but that ending? Wow. But it’s nothing like other books in the genre. Yes, it’s a sports romance set in the world of hockey. Friends, I wasn’t prepared for this book. But it kept appearing, accompanied by rave reviews, and I finally broke down and bought it. Since $5.99 is a bit more than I like to spend on a contemporary romance, I decided to pass. He just didn’t know it’d be a mistake that would follow him for the rest of his life.
Mike knew he was making a mistake when he let the rookie climb into bed with him. When it kept appearing, day after day, I finally clicked through and read the blurb.
When Thrown Off the Ice first appeared in my GoodReads feed, the cover caught my eye, but I kept scrolling.
0 kommentar(er)
