Blurb:
Through a miserable adolescence and a lonely adulthood, Skipper Keith has dreamed of nothing but family. The closest he gets is the rec league soccer team he coaches after work—and his star player and best friend, Richie Scoggins.
One brisk night in late October, a postpractice convo in Richie’s car turns into a sexual encounter neither of them expected—nor want to forget. Soon Skip and Richie are living for the weekends and their winter league soccer games—and the games they enjoy off the field. Through broken noses, holiday decorating, and the killer flu, they learn more about each other than they ever dreamed possible. Every new discovery takes them further beyond the boundaries of the soccer field and into the infinite possibilities of the best relationship of Skipper’s life.
Skipper can’t dream of a better family than Richie—but Richie’s got real family entanglements he can’t shake off. Skipper needs to convince Richie to stay with him beyond winter ball so the relationship they started on the field might become their happy future in real life!
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Dreamspinner Press
Contemporary, M/M, GLBT+, Holiday Story
200 e-book pages
3rd person
Stand-Alone
December 25-29, 2015
Kindle Edition
Rating: ????????
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Review:
Amy Lane’s books are cozy crack. If there is such a thing, maybe I just made it up. But, it’s true!
This…so sweet.
I’m kind of glad it came out when it did so I’d have days to enjoy it. Christmas is always really busy for me, so time to slug-out and read is almost non-existent. I was able to get in a few pages at a time betwixt all the festivities (three parties), tending to an exploded cake in the oven (yep), last-minute shopping/wrapping for people I see after Christmas, work stuff (because I fucking FORGOT to put in for time off), dessert attempt part two (tiramisu that turned out DIVINE), laundry (which is NEVER done), cleaning house between parties, then of course Christmas day (wherein we broke away from every Norman Rockwell tradition we’ve ever had…except the drinking of the alcohol, because priorities), my auntie as a houseguest and watching her and my mother play drunken Scrabble, humoring them with a few rounds of drunken Yahtzee. Ya know…stuff.
So…all my chaos aside, when I had time to sit and read–when I wasn’t suffering holiday exhaustion–I totally enjoyed this.
These guys together are marshmallow sweet. And this is low-angst Amy Lane at her best. Sure, there are some things that happen and challenges to overcome. But, it wasn’t the ugly cry, puffy-eyed rip-your-soul-to-shreds stuff she’s capable of. It’s the kind of falling in love that is the good and wholesome kind…with all the great sex.
GFY is either hit or miss for me–usually a miss to be honest. And I thought this was a solid hit. But more than calling it GFY, it’s really–at its core–a friends-to-lovers story because it felt like such a natural evolution to what they already were to each other. They knew each other in advance, had years to develop a good, solid friendship. They talked, and were close…and the attraction was mutually realized. They didn’t hem-n-haw too much about omigawd we’re gay. It just was–and it was beautiful.
So yeah, loved it!
This review also posted on GoodReads. Partial review posted on Amazon.