I keep things simple. I’m a classic one-night wonder. Relationships? Are you out of your mind? No. No way. Not interested. My heart is vulcanized rubber, puck hard, and that’s the way I like it.
Then I'm traded to the absolute worst team in the NHL, the Rocky Mountain Outlaws, and I’m hit with a one-two punch.
First: I’m asked to step up and lead the team, which is every kind of bad idea you can imagine. I'm a head-down, mind-my-business kind of guy. Mr. Uninvolved, Mr. No, Not Me, Mr. Find Someone Else. But these players have been through a mess of hell, and someone thinks I can help pull them together.
The Outlaws are made up of jaded veterans and wide-eyed rookies, and we have no business whatsoever succeeding. We are scrappy and plucky and built out of spit and duct-tape… and whatever we’re doing, it’s working.
Second: The first day I’m in Boulder, I go over the boards and come face-to-face with a pair of blue eyes and lose my heart. Boy, howdy: meet my new co-captain, Shea Darling.
He’s way, way off-limits. It's a stratospherically terrible idea to want or crave him. This crush, this infatuation, is going nowhere fast.
Yeah, right. I’m gone for Shea. I’m head over heels, and I’m all tangled up in something I can’t understand or control. This isn’t me. I don’t fall in love. And there’s nothing simple about Shea, or about the Outlaws. This team is finally putting up the wins, and we are making something of ourselves. Falling for my co-captain while we’re on a Cinderella run could jeopardize everything we’re striving for.
But then there’s this one night.
And this one kiss. And everything changes. Eighty-two games in a season. Twenty men hungry for redemption. One co-captain who could be my forever.
This is the rest of the story.
Comment: This is the third book I read by this author, the second one featuring hockey players. I feel confident already to say I can have a good read on the author's formula and while it's readable and addictive for the most part, his style is also rather cheesy...
Morgan is a veteran hockey player, meaning he is in his early 30s, and he has had a pretty good career but not remarkable despite having won a Stanley Cup once. He feels he might be ready for retirement when his agent calls to say he has been traded to the Outlaws, the worst team on the league. He is reluctant but after contacting a friend in that team, he is told something is going on and the Outlaws need his help. When he arrives, he finds something no one would imagine and he can't truly ignore he needs to help his new teammates. He isn't prepared, though, to find such a quick connection with Shea, his new co-captain, and that he also seems to reciprocate the interest. The focus has to be the team and to bring everyone together as such, but is there hope for Morgan and Shea to be more than just teammates?
As it had happened when I read the other two books by this author, I've found everything to be addictive and compelling for a while, from the start of the book until a certain point. Then, things start to become a little mushy, a little sugary, but I didn't particularly mind, I suppose one gets used to it. My issue is that, just like in the other books, closer to the end, something dramatic! happens and the plot turns into melodramatics. I really think the stories would gain more by not having such highlight on this tactic.
The plot is seemingly simple: Morgan arrives at the Outlaws with the reputation of being a easygoing guy, who does make waves, but he has the experience and confidence to do the opposite, something his friend Gavin is betting on. We soon learn the Outlaws' captain is being authoritarian and the coaches are complicit of this. I never understood why, perhaps laziness, not caring? Anyway, Morgan arrives and very quickly everything changes. The other players, who until now have been psychologically manipulated, suddenly start to work as a team and Morgan seems to be the "father" figure", the real captain the team should have had.
I was actually feeling the vibe of this in a very entertaining way, you know, this fantasy idea that someone is that special, and then, of course, the management of the team changes and all the pieces start to work out. I will repeat the word fantasy, because from a certain point on, that is what this story feels like, even though things don't get magically solved, it still feels as the plot moves on to a very fluid state of things, the puzzle pieces fit in well.
The team becomes stronger, the friendship bonds reveal they are all great guys and that the terrible state of things before Morgan arrived is now firmly behind them. It was a little too fairy tale like, which I've come to conclude is the author's style. Tal Bauer simple needs to write about good people having their HEA while stuff around them happens positively. I cannot say I dislike this but then, it's as if the struggles are just props to force the characters to move a certain way and to, obviously, set up a comparison with the negative aspects when things go wrong.
What happens here to add drama isn't that unlikely to believe, but it's also too much and the guys'reactions seem exaggerated, no matter how much they care about each other as friends and as a team. I have accepted that if I am to enjoy the author's romances, and I do plan on trying others one day, this is just the way things are and if knowing drama will happen, along with sugary romance, then the book would never work. I prefer to think about the "good vibes".
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