What Janine is Reading: Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, Part I
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Earlier in the year I read (or in one case, tried to read) the first three books in Rachel Reid’s m/m contemporary romance series, Game Changers, which follows queer NHL players as they fall in love and have to deal with the conflict presented by the heteronormative culture of the NHL and its fandom. I would label the first two books erotic romances, but not the third. Although my response to the books was decidedly mixed (as you’ll see if you keep reading) I plan to continue the series to follow one of the couples. I hope to write up a Part II post when I’ve caught up on the next three books.
Game Changer
Cute guy (Kip) meets famous hockey player (Scott) at the former’s workplace, a New York City smoothie shop. Attraction blossoms and they end up jumping each other’s bones. Scott hasn’t had a lot of experience in dating or sex because as a hockey player he has to hide his queerness. To continue the relationship, Kip will have to accept being a secret because his boyfriend can never come out.
This book was flimsy at best. Kip and Scott were likable but they go from instalust to hot sex to dating very fast. They have literally not held a meaningful personal conversation more than a few sentences long when Scott asks Kip to date him in secret. For Scott this is a huge risk to take; he could be outed if they are seen together more than once or twice. He hardly knows Kip when he shares his secret with him so he has no way to know that Kip will keep it.
Additionally, Kip is a sweet guy but they have nothing in common other than being gay and the hot sex so this didn’t compute for me either. Why Kip specifically, since there is nothing in common there? Kip is good looking but so what? Scott can have his pick of hot men. Kip wasn’t even interested in hockey before he and Scott met.
Scott is almost a virgin, so the absence of an answer to this question makes it seem like his head is turned by the first attractive man he’s flirted and had sex with. But he’d exerted a lot of willpower to avoid precisely this kind of risky situation, so this also doesn’t jibe.
The income disparity between them is the other main conflict, but it just made me uncomfortable and was another area where they lacked commonality.
This was one of the emptiest, flimsiest books I have read in years and I put it down unfinished at 51%. DNF.
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Heated Rivalry
Book two in the series, on the other hand, was much better. Shane and Ilya are two young hockey rising stars with NHL aspirations when they meet. Ilya is a snarky transplant from Russia. Shane is as Canadian as maple candy and almost as sweet. When a young Shane tries to shake hands with a young Ilya, Ilya is chilly and slightly contemptuous. Right before they get recruited by teams with a legendary rivalry, the press begins to play up an enmity between them where there is, admittedly, a strong dislike.
During a photoshoot when they are barely eighteen, they realize there is a spark there, an attraction so hot that it bewilders them. Soon they’re having hot sex that can be angry or irritated, or a competition to prove to the other that he is as hot for them as they are hot for him. Their enemies-with-benefits relationship lasts several years. All the while the media and their teams make hay out of their rivalry. When Ilya and Shane realize that they have fallen for each other, it seems like a disaster. Bad enough to be queer and in the NHL, but to love your greatest rival, too?
This was the rare enemies-to-lovers contemporary that worked for me. I like the trope a lot in fantasy, PNR, and historical settings, where there can be warring countries, packs, or clans, but in a contemporary context, it often relies on childish grudge-keeping. Here it worked partly because they were competitive people and enjoyed competing out of bed as well as in it and partly because they were so young when their rivalry started.
I liked Shane in all his uncertain sweetness but loved Ilya in all his sarcastic swagger. I liked that for many years this was an open relationship, with both of them seeing other people—it made sense given their initial enmity and the anti-gay vibe of professional sports. Shane was trying to figure out his sexuality, too (Ilya was bisexual and it was sexy and romantic that even though there were gorgeous women in his life, it was Shane he lusted for most).
The structure here is really creative. There are no flashbacks but the book follows Shane and Ilya over seven years (from ages eighteen to twenty-five), with a chapter or so for each time they meet and hook up when their teams compete. The book had a little too much sex. I loved much of that (it showed the changes in how they felt about each other through the years) but by the last couple of sex scenes I was ready to cry uncle. Heated Rivalry was also kind of fluffy but I still had a great time reading it, and I even reread parts of it a couple more times.
Spoiler: Show
I’ll read The Long Game for sure, though. B+/A-.
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Tough Guy
On the surface, Ryan and Fabian are as different as can be. Ryan is a burly NHL enforcer whose job is to beat the crap out of players on the opposing team. He struggles with depression and anxiety, including fear of flying, and he hasn’t taken satisfaction in his job for years. Fabian is a musician whose compositions are just starting to gain traction. Wearing eyeliner and eyeshadow, necklaces, and lace underwear gives him joy in his identity.
When Fabian was in high school his family, massive hockey fans, rejected him for being so unlike the aggressively masculine hockey-playing high school students they hosted every year. Fabian still hates hockey because all those boys but one were callous and contemptuous. Ryan was that one; when he lived with Fabian’s family and he was supportive and sweet.
Ryan is now out and living in Toronto’s LGBTQIA+ village. When they meet up again, feelings they never confessed to having in their youth return. Their relationship restores Ryan’s long-absent sex drive and helps him with his confidence issues. Fabian feels lucky to have attracted such a sweet and caring man. But trouble crops up when their feelings about hockey come into conflict.
Unlike with Scott in Game Changer, I could see why Ryan would get involved with Fabian. They do have common ground, including their bonding as teens and the secret crushes they had on each other then. Both were trapped then, too—Fabian never fit in with his family and Ryan didn’t fit in with other players, but they hadn’t reached independence yet so neither could escape. In adulthood, Fabian has things Ryan lacks and needs—an inner sense of security and comfort with himself. Ryan offers Fabian his first truly supportive relationship; the men he’s been involved with in the past haven’t been good to him.
Unfortunately, the problems I had with this book far outweighed the parts that worked. I wasn’t engaged by Ryan and Fabian as characters because although I bought their relationship, I didn’t buy them as people.
With regard to Ryan, it’s hard to imagine someone who suffers from acute anxiety being an NHL player, or an NHL player lacking passion for his sport. I’m sorry, but no. To play at this level you have to be extremely talented, competitive, confident, and passionate about the game. There are so many people hungry for that job and if you are not as hungry for it as any of them, it’s unlikely you’ll last long.
I also didn’t get how Ryan could be out without attracting attention from the press. Supposedly the fact that another NHL player had come out enabled him not to stand out, but come on! Not a single hockey fan seemed to notice him hanging out in Toronto’s village or in clubs. The press didn’t have a clue. I couldn’t buy that even a little.
My issues with Fabian’s character were even worse.
Spoiler: Show
There was also something else that infuriated me, and that was the casual tokenism with which Fabian’s cultural background was treated. We are told that Fabian is “Lebanese” but nothing else beyond that, and other than his surname (Salah) there are no indicators of his supposed culture. Nothing even as basic (and simple to research) as a love of Middle Eastern food.
Further, as one who was born in a country that borders Lebanon, I can say definitively that the author signaled via the characterization of Fabian’s family that she didn’t give a fuck for Lebanese culture. Hockey is not a sport that’s remotely popular in the Middle East, yet Fabian’s family members are fanatical about it. This is not the average fandom (I would have been fine with that); his parents coach hockey for a living, his sister is a competitive women’s hockey player, and the family hosts a young hockey player every year for an entire year. A more common form of fandom I could have gone with, but the juxtaposition between the family’s unusual level of participation in and passion for a sport that’s such a big aspect of North American and Northern European culture and the absence of any evidence of Lebanese culture in *any* of these people made the tokenism blatant.
Spoiler: Show
Tough Guy should have been another DNF for me. I only stuck it out because I was hoping for cameos by Ilya and Shane from Heated Rivalry. There were a few and they were the best parts of the book but I still ended up wishing I’d ditched it earlier. C-/D.
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I liked GAME CHANGER more than you did, but I agree it’s probably the weakest of the five books in the series. The book is adapted from Reid’s Captain America/Bucky Barnes FanFic (apparently in some places all Reid did was change the names and kept her original story wholesale). I think Reid has subsequently realized that the book is rather shallow and treacly: it’s telling that in COMMON GOAL, the MCs have a shared eye-rolling moment when they discuss the seemingly endless build-up to Scott & Kip’s wedding. HEATED RIVALRY is undoubtedly the best book in the series—it’s remarkably well-written with lots of subtle touches as we see a decade of Shane & Ilya’s secret relationship (and Shane slowly coming to terms with his sexuality). ROLE MODEL is my second-favorite book in the series, but I just can’t wait for the rest of Shane & Ilya’s story: LONG GAME is my most-anticipated romance of 2022.
Excellent reviews Janine. You almost make me want to reread Heated Rivalry, and I really disliked it.
I can’t remember if I read Game Changer or not. I definitely read Tough Guy and didn’t care for it, although I’d forgotten all of the details.
I really enjoyed Role Model – and Ilya’s a supporting character in it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @Janine; it’s always fun to see a review of a book (in this case three books) that I’ve read. Of the three books, I most enjoyed Heated Rivalry. I also look forward to reading The Long Game next year.
Thank you for your reviews, Janine! I really appreciate your honest appraisal of these three books, which completely aligns with my own. One additional comment on Game Changer: Kip was a history major in college, and we are told he is grad school material, but he is working selling smoothies and shows only limited signs of his intelligence, education or interests in his conversations. That was a disconnect for me and a failure to enrich that character. I enjoyed Heated Rivalry. Not only was Ilya a compelling, unique character, but his relationship with Shane was believable and fun. They were equals in a way that the characters in the other books are not. Now Tough Guy is really putting me off. I’m about 40% in and just about ready to DNF because of all the reasons you cited. I have no idea why Reid made Fabian Lebanese if she wasn’t going to incorporate his culture in a meaningful way. I may just use my Kindle search function and find Shane and Ilya’s names to see what they are up to and skip the rest!
@DiscoDollyDeb: I listened to Common Goal first and then read Role Model and went back and read Game Changer and Heated Rivalry so my reading order is very borked! But Game Changer was a weaker story I agree. I had more tolerance for it I think because I knew some of the other characters. The Long Game is also on my most anticipated list. Cannot. Wait. Ilya and Shane are the best!
I haven’t read Tough Guy yet so I’m not sure what I’ll think of that one.
@DiscoDollyDeb: I’ve heard multiple people praise Role Model and I’m looking forward to it. Common Goal is a hump I have to get over first. The blurb doesn’t excite me and (shallow of me) neither does the cover because of the way the cover model’s shoulders are hunched. I feel similarly about the cover of Tough Guy. I know Ryan is shy and morose so the cover model’s pose reflects the character but it’s still a turnoff. Oh well, better than the cover of Aster Glenn Gray’s latest at least.
@cleo: You are an outlier on Heated Rivalry! I am excited for Role Model. What did you think of Common Goal?
@Kareni: Same here re. The Long Game.
@Becky: That’s a great point about Kip. I had completely forgotten that part of his background. In general, Kip didn’t impress me as anything other than cute. He didn’t seem particularly smart and his only talents were being good in bed and making great smoothies. Which is not much on the romance hero scale. As nice as it is that your partner is cute looking, they won’t always be. Also (I forgot to mention this in the review), after the first couple of times the sex in this book got really boring. There was nothing new that changed or evolved on an emotional, relationship or character level, in contrast with Heated Rivalry where that was constantly happening.
Re Ilya and Shane in Heated Rivalry,
This. So much this. The equality made the relationship feel so much more believable. It was a huge part of the attraction for them, too, that the other was as good as they were. I appreciated that though Shane was more vulnerable within the relationship, he was just a tiny bit better on the ice. It was a lovely balance.
Re Fabian’s background—when we were putting together our “2021 in Review” conversation post this came up as a side tangent and I ranted and ranted about it. On top of everything else, I also found the way Fabian’s parents’ and sister’s rejection of him (on the basis of his lack of masculine presentation) was framed bizarre. I’m Israeli and the Mediterranean (not just the Middle East, this applies to countries like Greece, Italy and Spain as well) has a macho masculinity cultural aspect. That’s not to say that there aren’t vibrant queer communities in the Mediterranean (Lebanon included), but that macho culture is deeply entrenched and so if a family from one of these counties was going to reject a femme gay son for being femme, it would NOT be because he is nothing like a hockey player. There would be more pervasive cultural reasons and not something so esoteric, limited and specific to Northern Europe / North America culture. The whole thing was ridiculous and honestly offended me.
TBH, I think it’s worth doing.
I’m a cherrypicker at the best of times and this series definitely deserved it. In the order I read them, Heated Rivalry felt so fresh and ultimately emotional, Common Goal promised more than it delivered and got kind of boring and Role Model perhaps suffered from the great reviews because it was fine but not that memorable. I wish more m/m hockey romances would stay grounded in reality like Heated Rivalry and I wish more of them would use the sex scenes judiciously to show the relationship development. Finally, hats off to Rachel Reid for creating such charismatic character in Ilya. I read so many hockey romances that the heroes all merge into a blur, but he stands out as a true individual who steals every scene he’s in.
@Janine: Janine, you make an excellent point about the misrepresentation of Lebanese culture. I hadn’t thought it through to that extent, and I can see why you were so offended. Another critique: I did force myself to finish Tough Guy last night, and I kept thinking to myself, if Fabian were a woman and were starting to date a man with known mental health issues who hurts people for a living, wouldn’t red flags be raised in his own mind and by his friends? Instead Fabian is convinced this enforcer is really a gentle giant and never contemplates the risk that Ryan might turn those fists on him one day. Ryan had not fully addressed his mental health issues before they had their HEA. And another player’s serious mental health issue was used gratuitously to further the plot and give Ilya a cameo, IMO. I would give this book an F. Ugh.
@oceanjasper: I agree. We’ve talked before about how I’m not a cherry picker but this series makes a convincing argument for being one. That’s too bad about Role Model, I was looking forward to it after all the great reviews. I’ll strive to keep my expectations for it average.
Agreed 100% about Ilya. What a great character, I love him so much that when I got to the part where he said he went to a gay nightclub with Scott and Kip after Scott came out I was tempted to go back and finish Game Changer just for that. Maybe I should take my own advice to Becky and just search on Ilya’s name in Game Changer.
Does Ilya appear in Common Goal? Does Common Goal set up Role Model? Just wondering if I should skip it.
Have you read Sarina Bowen’s m/m college hockey NA romance The Understatement of the Year? It’s the only other m/m hockey romance I’ve read but it is so. Good. My favorite of her books (I’ve read only seven or so).
@Becky: Ryan’s mental health issues didn’t include anger management so I wouldn’t have had that concern for Fabian as a friend. In fact Ryan hated getting violent and didn’t get much of a release from it.
The anxiety I suppose could have been a concern but honestly, mental illness is so common that it doesn’t seem like such an unusual thing. Approximately 1 of 5 Americans suffers from mental illness in a given year, so I expect that if you were to try to account for the number of people who have ever had a mental illness the percentage would be much higher. We all know people who have been through it.
A lot of people have a mental illness and aren’t diagnosed or don’t believe that they are ill. Ryan took it seriously and sought treatment despite the difficulties posed by NHL culture, which earns him major points in my book.
As I said in one of the hidden spoilers, I do feel that there was nothing to account for the improvement of Ryan’s illness at the end of the book. And great point about the player who died.
An F seems like a reasonable grade.
@Janine – I know!
I had to look it up but I didn’t read Common Goal or Game Changer. I didn’t plan to continue with this series until Role Model came out. And like you, I just don’t care for the cover of Common Goal.
I liked Ilya in Role Model and I enjoyed the short linked to above so I’ll probably read The Long Game.
@cleo: Thanks!
@Janine: Ilya is in all of the books. And there is some set up for Role Model in Common Goal. I liked it – not as much as Heated Rivalry or Role Model but it was a lot better than Game Changer if that helps.
Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy have another mm series featuring hockey players – Him and Us. I liked them both very much although in many ways Him is The Understatement of the Year redux. They may work for you? (In Us you’d meet Blake who is also a scene stealer but for different reasons. He gets his own book (m/f) as well.) Both are great audiobooks also – they have stellar narrators.
@Kaetrin: Thanks Kaetrin, that is good to know about Common Goal. It makes me feel more encouraged to read it.
I have had some interest in those Bowen/Kennedy books. It’s funny what you say about Him being Understatement of the Year redux because I felt that the first book in Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers was like a weak, watered down, m/f take on Understatement.
(I also felt that The Shaming Hour had a lot in common with Blonde Date, LOL. I preferred the originals in both cases.)
Anyway, you’ve got me interested in the books. I like Elle Kennedy sometimes too, though I think when both are at the top of their game, Sarina Bowen is better—her writing has more nuance and depth.
@Janine: I’ve read so, so many mm hockey romances!
Avon Gale is my favorite author of mm hockey romances – I’ve joked that she’s ruined me for other mm hockey romances, but I still keep trying other authors. Her Scoring Chances series is set in the NHL minor leagues (I’m not remembering the official term). Like Game Changers, different books are about players on different teams. My favorite is #3, Power Play. It’s pretty stand alone, iirc.
Her other series, Hat Trick, is co-written with Piper Vaughn and is set in the NHL. I loved the first two books but thought the 3rd was pretty meh.
I was pretty ambivalent about Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy – it’s a fun, sexy story with good bi rep but I really hated the way they handled one of the heroes coming out to his team, among other issues. SBTB had two guest reviews (B+ and F) and the reviews and comments cover the good and bad points – https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/bookinfo/him/
@Cleo – Oops, meant to post the above with my other avatar.
@cleo: Thanks Cleo, I will check out Avon Gale.
Have you read The Understatement of the Year? I am curious what you thought if you did.
That negative review of Him really gives me pause. The outing aspect of the story sounds ridiculous and offensive and the fact that Ryan, the gay hero, presents Jamie, his bisexual partner, with negative STD test results while Jamie doesn’t do the same *even though* Jamie has just as much or more sexual experience would likely piss me off too. What a double standard.
(Tangentially, I recently had the realization that when I see dental dams discussed on social media in the context of romance novel sex scenes, it is usually in a discussion relating to sex in an f/f romance. Why???? Isn’t oral just as risky for heterosexual couples? What gives? Romancelandia, I expect better of you.)
I read through both threads and your comment about fetishizing the blowjob in the flashbacks in Him made me feel that I should also say that some of the sex in these Rachel Reid books reads to me as fetishizing or at least objectifying. It’s hard to explain though, which is why I didn’t mention it in the reviews. I can’t pinpoint why I feel that way, I just know that I do.
@Janine: I did read The Understatement of the Year when it came out and I liked it a lot – it was one of my favorites of that series. I haven’t resisted it in years though.
It was so interesting to me to re-read those SBTB reviews and my comments (I remembered and searched for them when Him was posted in the SBTB daily sales post recently). It made me realize how much the world of mm and queer romance has changed (or at least the tiny corner that I read in).
I’m not sure about the Rachel Reid books but I think I agree – the sex was definitely hard for me to connect to in Heated Rivalry and it may be because it felt objectifying. At least I felt that the first time I read it. Which reminds me – I was going to tell you that this thread inspired me to re-read Heated Rivalry and I liked the first half much, much better this time. I think that already knowing the characters made the difference for me. I still thought that there were serious pacing problems in the 2nd half (as you mentioned too).
@cleo: I haven’t revisited it in years (thank you autocorrect)
@cleo: It’s not just your corner of the genre, it’s a movement or at the very least a trend that’s swept through wide swaths of the book world. I’m not proud of it but I wasn’t much of a reader of queer romances until my Amazon and Goodreads algorithms started pimping them to me. I get so many of them now, and there are at least as many in fantasy, YA and SF (the other genres I read a lot of) as in romance if not more. At first I wondered if it was mostly me–after all we’re getting tailored recommendations from our self-curated bubbles these days–but I asked and Jayne said it’s not my imagination.
And really, I have to think she’s right because I see so many queer books get much-deserved attention on more major media outlets than romance blogs. With all this representation comes a more engaged reading community and that enriches the discussion and makes more voices feel welcomed to the conversation, of course. And it’s great for the genre(s) because many of these books are terrific.
Although–I recently had a conversation with an industry professional who told me if a queer romance tanks, many editors ascribe it to the queerness rather than to Sturgeon’s Law. So we still haven’t come as far as we need to. It’s been a leaps-and-bounds improvement, though!
With regard to the Rachel Reid books, I think it’s in all the ones I’ve read thus far (1-4). The longer I read the series the more it gets under my skin. I actually felt that way least with Heated Rivalry because the sex scenes really forward the story in that book. In books one, three, and four, that isn’t the case to the same extent and I am left wondering to what extent the sex is there to serve the story and the characters’ journey and to what degree the characters and their journey are there to serve as vehicles to an almost voyeuristic fantasy about men having sex. Maybe I’m reading too much in, though! I’m most of the way through Common Goal now and it’s hard not to think “objectification” with all the focus on weeping and glistening cocks. The surface depth of the connection between the characters and the flimsy conflict don’t help. I’ll save the rest of my thoughts for my next Goal Changers post, though.
@cleo: @cleo: Just briefly butting in to say that I loved Avon Gale’s first series, second one not so much. I have reread “Power play ” so many times.
@Janine: I had been getting tons of recommendations of queer romances for the longest time from Amazon because I had been reading them for about fifteen years. I always thought the more you read, the more they recommend of the certain genre/s?
@Sirius: Yes, that’s what I meant when I said “after all, we’re getting tailored recommendations from our self-curated bubbles these days.” That’s absolutely true and I’m sure accounts for some of the recommendations I’m getting BUT it’s also more mainstream than that now.
If you look at the Goodreads Awards for example, in the YA fiction category five of the twenty nominated novels have queer protagonists, in the YA Fantasy category it’s also five out of twenty, in the romance category there are fewer, just two out of twenty, but in adult SF it’s nine out of twenty and in adult fantasy it’s a whopping eleven out of twenty (those are the genres I read; I don’t have time to research the others). Goodreads editors choose the nominated books (readers then vote on them) and thirty-two out of the hundred they chose for these categories are queer books. Thirty-two out of a hundred–that’s almost a third. If Goodreads was the only site choosing to make a high percentage of its highlighted books queer selections I might not feel as I do, but I see this pattern in many major internet media outlets. So it’s not just because I’m reading a lot that more and more are being recommended to me (though that is certainly true too).
@Janine: It’s definitely an exciting time for LGBTQ+ fiction! It’s so great to see queer authors and queer books finally getting a wider audience – and it’s great that a lot of the books getting buzz are joyful or fluffy or not just about coming out or dealing with discrimination.
@Janine: Are these words and phrases more objectifying when used in mm romance rather than mf romance or the same? (genuine question). I see the same phrases used in mf romance. Is it the case that when used in a queer romance they are more objectifying because the characters are from a marginalised or underrepresented community? Or is it the same? Does the gender identity and/or sexuality of the author factor? (I do not know the answer to these questions!)
@cleo: Great point about them being joyful. I remember reading that E.M. Forster wrote Maurice partly because he was so frustrated that gay relationships always ended unhappily in books. And that book was written in 1913-1914. It’s sad to think how many decades that was the trend for.
@Kaetrin: Hmm good question. I was just asking myself this question last night. I’m going to give a complicated answer. I’ve read quite a few erotic romances and while there is a lot of kink, explicitness and heat, I don’t see many books where penile functions are described in such minute detail, as if it were the moon landing. These particular adjectives and also as “jets of cum” or ribbons of it are very attention-getting and as descriptions, weeping and jets are new ones to me. There is a lot of detailed focus on how the male body works.
But at the same time, there is an m/f author who does a bit of this zeroing in on minute details without it bothering me much. Lisa Kleypas tends to focus on twitches and pulses of both the penis and the clitoris a lot. Passion by Lisa Valdez also had minute details but that didn’t bother me the same way, it just seemed kind of silly and over the top.
So I think the fact that in the Kleypas and Valdez books one of the characters shares a gender with the author does help a lot. In a situation where the author and much of the audience isn’t part of the marginalized group being written about, it becomes easier to make me uncomfortable and to make me feel that the scenes are objectifying and fetishizing.
For all I know Rachel Reid could be queer but there’s no denying that a lot of money is made by selling these books to straight women. So the gender and sexuality of the author factors for me to an extent. If there were a woman and a man in the scene instead and it was still written with these descriptors, it would still be objectifying to an extent but it wouldn’t be discomfiting because I would view the representation differently.
At the same time many, many m/m books written by female authors whose sexuality I’m not aware of don’t make me feel that way at all, even when the sex scenes are quite explicit, so it isn’t that alone either. It’s the combination of the two I’ve mentioned, plus a third—what I said to Chloe about how when the the books are flimsy and there either doesn’t seem to be enough reason for the characters to be together or enough of a conflict to make a solid book that I start getting the feeling that the flimsy characters and story are mere window dressing for a lot of detailed, attention-getting descriptions of gay characters and gay sex that are clearly meant to titillate. And then that whole package is a bit discomfiting to me.
(I still enjoy aspects of the books including the sex in some cases (certainly that was true for me with Heated Rivalry, but the storyline in Heated Rivalry wasn’t at all flimsy and the characters were developed well enough and better than that in Ilya’s case). So obviously this isn’t by itself a dealbreaker for me.)
I don’t necessarily think objectifying men’s bodies is wrong. We as a society have been doing that with women’s bodies since the dawn of time. So yes the marginalized characters and community play a role in it for me.