What Janine is Reading: Rachel Reid’s Game Changers Series, Part II
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Over the past year, I’ve been reading Rachel Reid’s Game Changers m/m hockey romance series. I posted about the first three books here. I’ve since caught up on the rest of the series. Here are my thoughts on books four and five in the series, Common Goal and Role Model.
Common Goal
After my experiences with Game Changer and Tough Guy, I was a little hesitant to read this one and although it was better than those books, my hesitancy still turned out to be well-founded.
Common Goal (like the earlier books in the series) takes place partly in the milieu of the NHL, although I think it is the least NHL-focused of the books. This one is set in New York and the main characters are 41-year-old bisexual goalie Eric Bennett and 25-year-old gay bartender / grad student Kyle Swift.
Eric and Kyle meet when Eric joins his gay teammate Scott (hero of Game Changer) at the Kingfisher, the bar where Scott’s fiancé Kip works alongside Kyle. Kyle has been in love with Kip for a long time. He is happy for Kip and Scott but his heart breaks every time he sees them together and Eric quickly picks up on that.
Eric, whose twenty-year marriage recently ended, is thinking of trying to date men. When he befriends Kyle and comes out to him, Kyle offers to help Eric navigate the queer dating scene. This eventually turns into a friends-with-benefits relationship.
The book gets off to a strong start. Both men are likeable, especially Kyle. There is an initial misunderstanding when Kyle assumes Eric is a closeted married man because Eric still wears his wedding ring. Kyle was burned by married a man in the past so he’s chilly to Eric at first, even though he’s drawn to him. This is cleared up quickly, before it can get boring, so this minor conflict is engaging and well-paced and this part of the book is pretty good. There’s also some nice dramatic irony when Kyle is playing the role of Eric’s wingman, all the while desiring Eric himself.
The main conflict in the book turns out to be that Eric thinks he’s too old for Kyle and so it wouldn’t be fair to get involved with him. Eric feels that Kyle should be hanging out with younger people and enjoying his youth, not burdened by a boyfriend in his forties. Kyle misinterprets some of what Eric hints at to mean that Eric doesn’t view him as boyfriend material (even when they are having great sex-buddy sex) because Kyle is under thirty and is understandably a little stung, but he doesn’t let it stop him from helping Eric out by showing him around.
“He deserves more” is a close cousin to “I’m not worthy,” a trope that I’m usually not fond of when there aren’t major societal barriers that could cause the relationship to harm the other person. Since Kyle is already out that doesn’t apply here. But Eric’s reasoning is understandable so for a while this conflict is okay. It wears out its welcome eventually, though, because they each spend a lot of page time thinking that the other doesn’t want them for anything beyond friendship and sex even though each does. Lather, rinse, repeat—I got frustrated with them because I felt that one or two conversations would solve what was the main issue for over half the book.
Something else that bothered me is that Eric was married for twenty years but never told his then-wife, Holly, that he was bisexual. I can think of many scenarios where this would work well; for example, if Holly were likely to turn abusive after hearing it, if she couldn’t be trusted to keep it to herself and he wasn’t ready for the world to know, if theirs had been a shotgun wedding and they didn’t like each other much, and more. But no motivation for Eric’s secrecy was given. The marriage was a peaceful one and even though Holly left him (because they’d drifted apart) they are still friendly in the timeframe of this book, a year after they split.
So why didn’t Eric tell her for TWENTY YEARS? Under these circumstances I consider it deceptive. It’s in my value system that failing a good reason, you should be forthcoming with your spouse about the major aspects of who you are. Your spouse has hitched their wagon to yours, hopefully for life, and if they are trustworthy, they deserve your trust.
Eric is also tranquil about this choice. He feels guilty about not telling Scott but not about not telling Holly, even though he lived with her for twenty years. This was a real head-scratcher for me.
Also, shouldn’t Eric have at least felt some angst here on his own behalf? But no. When Common Goal begins, he is starting to think about coming out (concurrently with approaching retirement) and isn’t quite ready to tell people but there’s never any sense that being closeted from own wife made Eric feel isolated or that it kept him from feeling accepted–seen, known, and loved for who he was.
Additionally, Eric excels at too many things. He is a successful art collector with great taste in art, an amazing photographer (so much so that his art dealer thinks he could be a professional artist), a master at yoga, good looking (of course), a great goalie, and thanks to his hockey career, a millionaire. Kyle was a more believable character; his ambition was to run a bar where he could put his inventive cocktails at the menu and though he was hot in and out of bed, he wasn’t superman. That made me like him more. He also had a backstory that was very affecting.
The sex scenes included edging (a new-to-me term for a concept that decades of romance reading have well acquainted me with). This kind of thing can make a sex scene really hot, but though I thought the sex scenes were to a degree, I wasn’t happy with them because they felt objectifying. There were weeping penises, glistening penises, and jets of cum. Unsubtlety isn’t really my thing even in m/f romances, but in a context where the characters are from a marginalized group and the author isn’t from that same group, it can make me uneasy. The flimsiness of Eric’s characterization and of the conflict in the second half, when combined with sex scenes where I strongly felt the female gaze, made parts of the book feel like an excuse for objectifying sex between men.
I read Common Goal mainly to catch up on Ilya and Shane from Heated Rivalry in time for The Long Game (Heated Rivalry’s direct sequel) and it was nice to see Ilya here, his cameo was great. Unfortunately, this one is weak tea at best. C.
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Role Model
The story here is about Troy Barrett, a hockey forward in the NHL. In Tough Guy we saw Troy bully his then-teammate Ryan Price. Troy has a history of being a bully, partly because that’s what his father modeled for him and partly because Troy is gay and in the NHL. Troy is terrified of being discovered and acting the part of a toxically masculine man is a good way to cloak that part of himself. Over time Troy has begun merging with his mask and when Role Model begins he’s not sure where the mask ends and his real self begins.
At the start of Role Model Troy has just been traded from the excellent Toronto Guardians team to the weaker Ottawa Centaurs. The trade came about because the star of the Toronto team, Dallas Kent, was accused of rape by multiple women. Though Dallas was his best friend, Troy knew him well enough to believe the women. Troy didn’t plan on it, but he snapped at Dallas at a team practice, calling him a disgusting rapist. The practice was filmed and the video created controversy. Most Guardians fans and certainly the team’s owners support Dallas and they wanted Troy off the Toronto team.
Troy arrives in Ottawa freshly out of another broken relationship, too. His ex-boyfriend and secret lover, movie star Adrian Dela Cruz, was also closeted when they met. Adrian turned out to have been cheating on Troy and Troy only found out when Adrian came out of the closet to announce his engagement to the other man. While Adrian collects praise and well-wishes, Troy struggles not just with his broken heart but also with being unable to share that part of what he’s going through with anyone.
Troy feels a lot of self-loathing and doesn’t reach out to anyone on his new team. A few of them reach out to him, but what most changes Troy’s life is meeting Harris Drover. The team’s openly gay social media manager, Harris is also sweet, lovable and cheerful. Harris isn’t gorgeous or athletic, but Troy finds him attractive and his presence soothing. Troy begins to spend more and more time in Harris’s office because of that, and as he does, he relaxes more.
Harris isn’t sure at first what to expect of Troy but as he gets to know him, he quickly learns to like and respect him–a liking and respect that Troy feels he isn’t worthy of. Harris doesn’t know Troy is gay but he thinks he’s gorgeous. His attraction to Troy persists even after he tells himself it’s a bad idea.
A handful of times Troy starts to open up to Harris and then bails abruptly, worried that his need to come out to someone will overwhelm his need to stay closeted. Harris is confused by this abruptness.
The book is about Troy’s journey but also about the team’s journey— under the leadership of team captain and Hidden Rivalry protagonist Ilya Rozanov, the Centaurs slowly start to win games. Can they transform the team in time to reach the playoffs?
I had begun to wonder if Reid was a one-hit wonder so Role Model was a pleasant surprise. Though it wasn’t on the level of Heated Rivalry, it was a solid book. The romance and the subplot about the Centaurs’ transformation are both satisfying. I was impressed that despite the fact that the story was Troy-centered, Harris’s presence never feels comparatively faded. He has such a distinctive personality that he stands out whenever he appears on the page.
The same is even more true of Ilya, who personifies charisma. He is cocky, snarky and amusing. Here we see how much he has matured in the years that have passed since Heated Rivalry. Ilya is now more open and generous, supportive of Troy and of the team. I love the way his growth has been developed over the course of the series and I was thrilled to see so much of him in Role Model. He’s a scene stealer and the best thing about this and every other book in the series.
I did have some issues with Role Model. The biggest was that I found Harris a little too sweet and vulnerable. It felt manipulative to take it that far. He could have been just as good for Troy and more believable with just a tiny bit more self-preservation, a softie who nevertheless watched out for himself once in a while (for example if he’d felt slightly annoyed at least once when Troy abandoned him in mid-conversation). Making him this much of a patient marshmallow took some believability and dimension away.
Food was a more minor thing that tripped me up as far as Harris and believability. Harris’s family were apple farmers and he was into all things apple—apple cider, hard cider, apple crisp, apple pies, apple shampoo. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I had grown up on an apple farm, I would have been sick of apples by the time I was ready to leave. It was even more jarring that Harris’s favorite food was ice cream, given his history of arterial surgeries. Every time he had ice cream or other rich foods, I worried that he would end up experiencing a heart attack.
The team was a bit too nice.
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A copyediting nitpick—Reid confuses “may” with “might” in this book and in her others. Has anyone else has noticed that? May/might confusion is an issue I see more of in books than I used to and it’s so distracting that it’s almost enough to make me want to offer to copyedit the books myself.
I want to give props for a few things. The resolution to the storyline about Troy and the Dallas Kent controversy was satisfying.
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And in this book, the sex scenes didn’t feel objectifying, so there’s that, too. B.
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I love this series—even the books that didn’t quite grab me were still engaging reads. My ranking would be:
HEATED RIVALRY: the ne plus ultra of m/m hockey romances, imho. I love everything about this book, especially how carefully Reid shows the gradual growth of the relationship between Shane & Ilya—from casual hookups to something deeply emotional. There are a lot of sex scenes in the book, but every one of them contributes to the development of the story.
ROLE MODEL: grumpy-sunshine ftw! Plus some serious analysis of why athletes are given a pass on assault allegations—but the subplot does not overwhelm the romance.
COMMON GOAL: I had some of the same complaints you did, but I liked the story somewhat more than you did. I really would have liked to explore Kyle’s crushes on Scott & Kip. It seems as if his unrequited crushes were over the minute he got together with Connor and that didn’t seem realistic to me.
TOUGH GUY: I liked that the book addressed mental health issues (one of the MCs has anxiety & panic attacks) and ED (the result of medication taken for the aforesaid issues), along with the other MC being gender-nonconforming. However, as has been pointed out in another review here, the decision to make that MC a Canadian of Lebanese ancestry and then do very little exploration of Lebanese culture seemed like otherization and exoticization rather than inclusion and individualization.
GAME CHANGER: oddly, I found that the book that started it all was the weakest of the series and I’m glad I read HEATED RIVALRY first or I might not have continued the series. GAME CHANGER is a serviceable romance but it’s really more Scott’s journey to coming out—and I felt Kip remained a bit of a cypher through the book—“a pretty, painted boyfriend” as Scott thinks of him later in the book.
Countdown to April 26 and THE LONG GAME!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @Janine (you too, @DDD); it’s enjoyable to read a review of books that I’ve read. I am also looking forward to The Long Game!
@DiscoDollyDeb: Great summary of the first five books!
I read Heated Rivalry twice more after reading The Long Game. I think I might have enjoyed it even more because having read The Long Game enhanced it. Maybe I should have graded it higher when I reviewed it (I gave it a B+/A-).
That is a great point about Common Goal; Kyle’s unrequited feelings for Kip dissipated too fast and exploring them a bit more might have given the book more depth and complexity. It also would have given the book more substance and more to focus around. Eric’s misgivings about their age difference might not have been dragged out so long if the book had that. It is a tricky conflict for a romance, though, when one of the protagonists is in love with a third party. It can be done but takes a lot of skill because it’s the kind of thing that can undermine the romance if the author doesn’t handle it well.
Re. Tough Guy — hmm, I thought the connection between Ryan’s low sex drive and his medication was barely mentioned. And re Fabian’s background, I realized in my recent Heated Rivalry reread that while Shane’s cultural background is handled somewhat better, it is also underdeveloped.
Game Changer — co-sign. I almost didn’t read Heated Rivalry because of it.
Did you rank these in the order of how much you liked them? That would be exactly my ranking too. If you take Heated Rivalry out of the equation, all the others show the author getting better over time. My hope is that that’s so.
@Kareni: I’m glad you enjoyed the post! :)
I also wanted to add that the cover image is such a good visual image of Troy. It matches his description in the book so well, and I visualized him looking much like that too. It’s my favorite cover image in the series as opposed to the cover of The Long Game, which is easily my least favorite.
@DiscoDollyDeb – have you read Avon Gale’s Scoring Chances series? It’s my gold standard mm romance hockey series – Power Play is my favorite.
I think I wrote in my GR review of Heated Rivalry that Avon Gale had ruined me for other hockey romances.
@Cleo: I think the opposite situation is true for me: every time I pick up an m/m hockey romance, I’m hoping HEATED RIVALRY lightning will strike again! I’ve tried hockey books by both Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn, but they just don’t hit my sweet spot the way HR does. One other m/m hockey story I love is Taylor Fitzpatrick’s THROWN OFF THE ICE, but because of its absolutely gutting ending (neither an HEA nor an HFN), I’m not sure it even counts as a romance (although it’s undoubtedly a love story).
@Cleo: I really really loved Power play, although Breakway was fun too. None of her other books worked nearly as well for me as those two though.
Janine, at the time I have read “Common goal” I certainly liked it way more than you did, but funny thing – did not stay with me at all. A role model was quite enjoyable I have to say. Actually now when I have read all the books in these series except first ( no plans to read it) and last I have to say that none except “Heated rivalry” ended up being very memorable sadly. as you know ” A role model” I just read, so I do hope for more staying power for this one.
I loved Role Model too. Not quite Shane/Ilya but right up there. Of course Ilya stole the show every time he was on the page in RM too – he can’t help himself! LOL
@Sirius: Yes, I agree, Tough Guy, Common Goal (and for that matter Game Changer, which I know you didn’t read) are all forgettable books. I think Role Model has more substance and holds together better, so I expect it will stick with me more.
@Kaetrin: Yeah, the Ilya and Shane books are indelible. Role Model was good; I don’t know if I’d say I loved it but I am certainly glad I read it. Even more now that I’ve read The Long Game–I would not advise skipping it if you (general you) want to get the most out of The Long Game and of course reading Heated Rivalry first is even more essential. Re Ilya–yes!
This makes me glad I skipped Common Goal. Eric not being out to his ex-wife would have bothered me too (20 years is a long time!). I’d at least want it mentioned in the story – like does he regret not telling her? Does he at least reach out to her before he comes out publicly?
@Janine: I also noticed that Shane’s bi-racial identity was underdeveloped when I re-read Heated Rivalry, after reading your review of Tough Guy. And I don’t remember noticing that before.
Janine, your reviews of this series have been completely in sync with my own. Regarding Common Goal, I was initially interested in the fact that Kyle was a grad student in art history, and Eric is an art collector. Early on, they bonded over art, and that would have been a fun and interesting road to travel with them. Yet we never delve into what drove Kyle to spend years studying art or why he was so willing to give it up to run a bar. That was a head scratcher for me. I felt like Reid just wanted to have one of her couples running this bar.
Regarding Role Model, I agree with your concerns about Harris’ heart condition. I wondered what he did to keep his heart healthy. I know there can be a lot of stress in a relationship if one person has a chronic health condition and does not take care of themselves. Troy is very fit and health conscious, and I am sure he would start wondering about this himself after awhile. I was hoping Reid would give us more about this, but she didn’t. A solid book, but not exceptional for me. Except for Ilya, of course!
Heated Rivalry was exceptional in so many ways, from the way the book was structured to its two leads, who are three dimensional, charismatic, competitive and intensely passionate about everything. They are credible as a couple, and their scenes together sparkle. Janine, I am so glad you liked The Long Game— I am looking forward to it even more now!
@cleo: I know, right? It drove me crazy. And no, no regrets are mentioned, though he feels a lot of regret about not telling Scott. And he does not reach out to her that we see, though he does to Scott. It was a double standard.
Eric and Kyle have talk about Holly in this context once, two-thirds of the way through the book (he has been thinking of coming out after the season is over for quite a while at this point).
So he’s never even considered the question of whether or not his wife of twenty years would be surprised if he came out, even though he’s thinking a lot about doing it, and he lumps her in with “other people” generally. What an insensitive way to view her and treat her. But he’s generally a sensitive and observant person, so it doesn’t make much sense. All I could think was that Reid wanted to illustrate that he was closer to Kyle than he’d ever been to Holly. It did accomplish that, I suppose, but it was a deceptive thing for him to withhold this information from her and it drove me up the wall.
@Becky: I had that thought about Kyle’s art history background too. He didn’t even enjoy studying it and if you don’t like it, it makes no sense to major in it. I guess he had the money to do it (from his parents) but why? It’s not a major that makes it easy to get a job that is directly related to it.
And yeah re Role Model. Harris ate a lot of rich foods and his family had no compunction about serving them to him. It was weird. I can only hope that being with Troy will get Harris more interested in working out but there was no indication of that. Maybe Reid wanted to avoid fat shaming? But in the context of a heart condition and multiple arterial surgeries it really was strange.
I reread Heated Rivalry twice recently (having already read The Long Game added to the experience). I do love how competitive Shane and Ilya are, it’s almost foreplay to them in Heated Rivalry. So it’s sexy on top of being a commonality. And they have so much respect for each other as athletes.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Someone said in an earlier thread that Avon Gale’s books with Piper Vaughn aren’t as good as the series Gale wrote on her own.
@Janine: I’ve tried books they write individually and books they write as a team—and none of them really grabbed me. I do give the edge to Avon Gale though; the Piper Vaughn books I read seemed to spend half their page count rehashing previous couple’s stories.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Ah, I see. I apologize for misreading.
@Janine: I enjoyed “Tough guy” a lot.
@Sirius: Sorry, I was confused by what you said earlier:
Now I’m confused. If only Heated Rivalry was very memorable for you, then it follows that you feel Tough Guy was forgettable, right? That’s what I thought, but then what did I misunderstand, can you clarify?
@Janine: yeah sorry this was definitely a confusing phrasing from me. I liked them both when I read it, but “Common goal” ended up not being memorable. “Tough guy” stayed with me more.