REVIEW: Understatement of the Year by Sarina Bowen
B+ ReviewsContemporary romance / m/m / New Adult16 Comments
Dear Ms. Bowen:
I’m not a big m/m reader but after devouring The Year We Hid Away and the The Year We Fell Down, I had to read the third book in the series. This is the story of John Rikker, the only “out” Division 1 hockey player, and the first love of his life, Michael Graham.
Rikker gets outed at his private Catholic college and is kicked off his team. Harkness College offers him a scholarship and Rikker accepts. He’s completely unprepared for the rush of feelings he has when he sees Graham.
Graham is also taken aback. Just the sound of Rikker’s voice affects Graham.
The sound of him was like being scraped raw. The rough quality of his voice turned me inside out with memories. Both good and bad.
Graham and Rikker are both intriguing characters but Graham carries the emotional notes of the book. His agony with his sexual identity is keen. He sleeps around, a lot, but particularly with his friend Becca. He wants to not be attracted to men but he is. I said on a podcast that he’s so far in the closet he’s in Narnia. (Then John, our former blogger who was on the podcast, said that it was a good name for a gay club but it would be called The Wardrobe instead).
Graham is miserable. He’s ashamed of his desires. He’s eaten up with guilt over how he ran away from an injured Rikker when they were attacked as teens. His self loathing is part of what makes it easier to forgive him for the sometimes shitty behavior he exhibits toward Rikker.
It’s not like Rikker’s life is all roses. His parents have shunned him so he went to live with his grandmother who is now ailing. He’s at a new college and a new team and not everyone there is okay with his sexual identity. He deals with his unwanted celebrity status, locker room pettiness, but is often surprised at the level of support he encounters. His complete acceptance of his own sexuality is in direct contrast with that of Graham’s. I particularly enjoyed seeing Rikker return home, meet up with his ex-boyfriend and basically enjoy being a college student without the added pressure of being a symbol for others.
Everything I love about New Adult is in this book. The college experience, the parties, the furtive dorm room sex, and the discovery of self. Rikker understands and accepts himself whereas Graham does not. Because of that Graham’s in near constant emotional turmoil. For Rikker, his emotional angst comes from being near Graham and not being able to have him.
They were friends as teens and then lovers, discovering sex for the first time together. While Rikker has had at least one other boyfriend, Graham really does it for him and Graham’s hot and cold behavior is confusing, arousing, and maddening.
There’s enough hockey to please the sports fan but not so much that it will turn off those who don’t have the first clue about hockey. It’s just a heartfelt, emotional romance that happens to center around two young men that, as a reader, I found it impossible not to care about.
Characters from previous books appear but are not intrusive. There’s a solid cast of secondary characters including one of my favorite– Bella. She plays the beard but doesn’t even know it. She has her own problems and worse, she’s half in love with Graham who sleeps with her but is in love with a man. She needs her own book stat. B+
Best regards,
Jane
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I really liked this book. I think I just really love her writing – it is hard to surprise me with anything in m/m these days, but the characters felt so real and heart felt and angst was believable and not over the top. I loved loved Bella and will read her book in a heart beat.
I really liked that this felt like a normal romantic novel – except for the excellence – but incidentally the main characters were gay. It felt ordinary – except for the excellence……did I mention the excellence? There was no sense of gay fetishisation, no clumsy appropriation, just a great love story within a strong community of characters. Thank you Sirius for introducing me to this author.
I have gotten totally hooked on this series. I picked up the first on sale with Jane’s money back guarantee and then glommed all of them :D My favourite is the second, I think.
You can read these books out of order, with only very mild spoilers (the previous books have a HEA!)
Jane, I picked up The Year We Fell Down when I saw your rec. Loved it. So I bought the rest of her Ivy Years novels and the novella, Blonde Date. Ms. Bowen has excellent characterization skills and I find myself falling into the stories, rooting for the HEA. Thanks for giving the shout out for this author because I’m not sure I would have found her otherwise and that would have been a shame.
@Sirius: and @Raine: Thanks for commenting. As you know, I don’t read a lot of m/m so I didn’t know if the coming out story would totally bore readers (given the guest opinion we posted a while back) but for me, Graham’s anguish came off as very genuine. It’s nice to hear that you feel the same (although obviously if you felt differently that would have been okay too).
@Janhavi: The Bridger mentions in this book was the icing on the cake for me.
@Eve Silver: A definite under discovered treasure.
I’m not a frequent reader of M/M either. but I’m hooked on this series and will be getting this one soon. Bowen tweeted a few days ago that Bella’s book is next.
BTW, the Kobo link isn’t working.
I’m the opposite – I like mm but I rarely read NA. And yet I inhaled this series.
I enjoyed this one, but not as much as Blonde Date or The Year We Fell Down. ( my too faves). There was a little too much angst and not enough flirting for my taste. I think SB does a great job of writing about people falling for each other – and I look for that in a romance writer because it seems to be hard to do well. Since Graham and Rikker had a previous relationship, it made sense that there was less on page falling-in-love, but I missed it.
I thought the coming out stuff was good. I’m kind of neutral about coming out in mm and in queer romance in general. I like it if it’s done well, but if it’s not, it can get boring to me. Writing about coming out in ya and NA makes sense to me because that’s when a lot of people come out.
I think I mentioned this on Kaetrin’s review too, but this is the second mm NA I’ve read recently with this set up – hockey player had to transfer colleges after he was outed by an indiscret photo (the other one is Poster Boy by Anne Tenino). And even with that, UOTY felt fresh to me.
I loved the whole Ivy Years series. I devoured all the books in about a week and was so happy this one was coming out (no pun intended). As you say, I thought the sports aspect was handled really well in this one. The game bits were actually so exciting, I think, because *both* main characters were on the ice. That’s an imbalance I hadn’t really noticed before in M/F sports stories: that one character is always the player and the other breathless in the stands. Much more exciting for them both to have a stake in the games.
The author said Bella’s book is next and I’m very excited for that. I wish it was released already!
I loved this book so much- I’d never left an Amazon review on anything before, but I did for this book just because I so wanted to talk about it, and I didn’t know anything “in real life” who’d read it!
It felt incredibly authentic to the college experience to me, which isn’t something I often find in the NA I read, and I loved the characters- they reminded me of actual people I knew in college. It actually made me nostalgic for college, which is another thing I’d never experienced reading NA before. I have the whole series and actually bought “The Year We Fell Down” for my mom last week because I wanted her to read these as well.
Has anyone read Bowen’s non-NA books? Are they as good?
@lozza; yes! So good I’ve already re-read them both.
@Jane – I gave this one a B+ too. I really liked it. I liked The Year We Hid Away a smidge better and Blonde Date a little better again – but as I said in my own review – it’s like comparing chocolate cake and banana cake – I like chocolate best but they’re all really good. I agree with Cleo in that I think the other books had more of the courtship I love to read about and with Graham and Rikker most of that was when they were 16. But it wasn’t until Cleo pointed it out to me that I was able to put my finger on it.
I can hardly wait for Bella’s book. She is so awesome – I adored her.
I know you’re not a big fan of novellas Jane. but Blonde Date is such fun. If you’re inclined to make a novella exception I heartily recommend it.
I loved this book. I read The Year We Fell Down First (after finding out about it here) and really liked the way the characters were actually shown falling in love (which seems to happen far too rarely in romance). I agree that this one lacks the initial attraction element, but I didn’t mind that because the characters’ prior relationship is the cause of much of the angst between them, and they still have so much to go through to arrive at a happy and satisfying relationship.
Another thing I really appreciated in this book is that Sarina Bowen’s sex scenes are more about emotions than graphic descriptions that add nothing to the story. That’s not to say that she writes sex in a way that is vague or coy, but there is a certain level of restraint that I haven’t seen too often in MM romance. Graphic detail in hetero or MM romance doesn’t offend me, but I don’t like it when a touching and emotional romance suddenly turns jarringly erotic when the characters hit the bedroom. I’m more interested in the emotional intimacy of sex, and this book delivers that.
Jane, I just wanted to thank you so much for highlighting the Year We Fell Down a few weeks ago. I’m not much of an NA reader and probably would have ignored it if I’d heard about it elsewhere. I never glom, but I have with this series. I think my favorite has been The Year We Hid Away, but they’ve all been so good. Can’t wait for the next one!
I have truly enjoyed discovering Sarina’s books and I’ve loved all of the ones I’ve read. I read only a smattering of NA in general but hers are now a must buy for me. I am just starting to read some m/m books, but I fear I may have high expectations now that I’ve read this one.
I have just had such a good time with this series. I’m in the middle of this one right now and thoroughly enjoying it. The sports, the Ivy League setting, the consistently sympathetic characters, and the lack of eye-rolling drama. I’m already in love with Graham and Rikker.