Tristan Holt is nothing
if not pragmatic. Despite a flourishing career as a defenseman for the
Atlanta Venom, Tristan knows he can’t play hockey forever. One day he’ll
retire—if an injury doesn’t force him to hang up his skates first. His
backup plan? Finishing his business degree. But he doesn’t count on a
very inappropriate attraction to his standoffish sociology professor,
Sebastian Cruz.
Sebastian is on the bottom rung of the Sociology Department at Georgia State. He has his sights set on tenure, and he can’t afford to be distracted, especially not by a sexy student with a body straight out of Sebastian’s dreams. No matter how much Tristan tempts him, that’s one line Sebastian won’t cross. At least not until summer classes end. After that, everything is fair game.
But Sebastian lives loud and proud, and Tristan is terrified of being the first out player in the NHL. Neither of them can afford to risk their hearts when they can’t imagine a happily ever after. The problem is, unlike hockey, when it comes to love, there are no rules.
Sebastian is on the bottom rung of the Sociology Department at Georgia State. He has his sights set on tenure, and he can’t afford to be distracted, especially not by a sexy student with a body straight out of Sebastian’s dreams. No matter how much Tristan tempts him, that’s one line Sebastian won’t cross. At least not until summer classes end. After that, everything is fair game.
But Sebastian lives loud and proud, and Tristan is terrified of being the first out player in the NHL. Neither of them can afford to risk their hearts when they can’t imagine a happily ever after. The problem is, unlike hockey, when it comes to love, there are no rules.
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What I thought about Off the Ice
In this coming out tale, Tristan and his professor Sebastian have a good spark between them, and once they are no longer in any academic relationship, Sebastian and Tristan hook up.
What was a physical attraction turns into more over the months they are together. They really are cute and fit each other quite well. But there's one sticking point -- Sebastian is out and Tristan isn't. This becomes a source of conflict between them, and it isn't going away.
I liked the exploration of the dilemma Tristan faces in Off the Ice. And since I really liked Tristan and Sebastian together, I felt his pain too. There weren't any real surprises here, so it was the interaction between the two main characters that kept me reading.
There's a definite dominant/submissive flavor to Tristan and Sebastian's relationship and their love scenes weren't the usual fare in M/M and I liked that too.
Overall, no big surprises, interesting characters and dynamics, in a fairly typical sports-themed M/M.
An ARC was provided for review.
About Avon Gale
Avon Gale wrote her first story at the age
of seven, about a “Space Hat” hanging on a rack and waiting for that special
person to come along and purchase it — even if it was a bit weirder than the
other, more normal hats. Like all of Avon’s characters, the space hat did get
its happily ever after — though she’s pretty sure it was with a unicorn. She
likes to think her vocabulary has improved since then, but the theme of quirky
people waiting for their perfect match is still one of her favorites.
Avon grew up in the southern United States,
and now lives with her very patient husband in a liberal midwestern college
town. When she’s not writing, she’s either doing some kind of craft
project that makes a huge mess, reading, watching horror movies, listening to music
or yelling at her favorite hockey team to get it together, already. Avon is
always up for a road trip, adores Kentucky bourbon, thinks nothing is as stress
relieving as a good rock concert and will never say no to candy.
At one point, Avon was the mayor of both
Jazzercise and Lollicup on Foursquare. This tells you basically all you need to
know about her as a person.
Avon is represented by Courtney
Miller-Callihan of Handspun
Literary Agency.
About Piper Vaughn
Piper Vaughn wrote her first love
story at eleven and never looked back. Since then, she’s known that
writing in some form was exactly what she wanted to do. A reader at the
core, Piper loves nothing more than getting lost in a great
book—fantasy, young adult, romance, she loves them all (and has a
two-thousand-book library to prove it!). She grew up in Chicago, in an
ethnically diverse neighborhood, and loves to put faces and characters
of every ethnicity in her stories, so her fictional worlds are as
colorful as the real one. Above all, she believes that everyone needs a
little true love in their life…even if it’s only in a book.
Represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan of Handspun Literary.
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