You Should Be So Lucky

Title: You Should Be So Lucky 

Author: Cat Sebastian 

Publisher: Avon 

Release Date: May 7, 2024 

Genre(s): M/M Sports Romance, Historical 

Page Count:  400 

Rating: 5+ stars out of 5 

Read book blurb here

I've read several Cat Sebastian books, and hold a particular fondness for The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, but this book? Sebastian knocks it out of the park (yup, a baseball metaphor). 

I loved this book in a way that makes me ponder the philosophical meaning of baseball (despite not being a huge fan of baseball).

It's slow and often seems pointless. It's beautiful, when it isn't a mess. There's a vast ocean of mercy for mistakes: getting hits half the time is nothing short of a miracle, and even the best fielders are expected to have errors. The inevitability of failure is built into the game.

It's 1960, and Eddie O'Leary, a sunny shortstop with one of the most beautiful swings anyone's ever seen, sure hands and excellent fielding, has been traded by the Kansas City A's to the New York Robins, a new expansion team scrapping the bottom of the league. He's experiencing a slump, the likes of which is hard to even watch, and the Robins aren't speaking to him because he insulted everyone on the team when he learned he was traded. 

Mark Bailey is in the midst of a slump as well, a gray miserable half-life of merely surviving a tragedy that is slowly revealed over the course of the book. He's a writer at the Chronicle assigned to write a weekly diary of Eddie O'Leary over the course of the season. 

The stage is set, and what unfolds is gloriously elegiac as the two men move from reluctant collaborators to a sort of friendship and then into a relationship. The book is short on explicit sex scenes, and long on matters of the heart. Here are two men who form a relationship that works in the midst of a time where being gay is something to hide, something to deny. 

Eddie and Mark are beautifully articulated, and even the secondary and tertiary characters are fully fleshed out. You end the book caring these people. At 400 pages, I could have easily read another 100 pages and still want more. 

And I love the way Sebastian give us deeper things to ponder than merely a meet/cute, fall-in-love relationship. There's the nature of fate, the idea that statistically statistics don't really matter at all, and sometimes ....

Rooting for a team doesn't always mean that you need them to win; sometimes you just want to see them fight, do their best, or even just showing up. Sometimes you want to look at a guy and say: Well, he's fucked, but he's trying.

5+ stars for this book. You should be so lucky to pick up this book! 

And a final wonderful thought from Eddie: "I'm not saying things happen for a reason - I hate that. I'm saying that things happen. And it doesn't have to mean anything except what it means to you. Nobody else gets to decide. "

I received an ARC from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Game Changer (Game Changers #1)

Title:  Game Changer (Game Changers #1)
Author:  Rachel Reid
Publisher:  Carina Press
Release Date:  October 22, 2018
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Sports, Coming Out
Page Count: 334
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Read book blurb here

Who doesn't love hockey? Hot sexy men on ice - skating, shooting and scoring. I mean, amiright?

Scott Hunter, captain of the Admirals, is a loner, not necessarily by choice, and hiding his sexual orientation means no romantic dinners out, no plus one for charity and team events, taking vacations where he isn't well known and picking up men away from the watchful eye of the media.

But when Scott meets Kip, everything changes. Not as quickly as Kip, who is out and proud, would like but for a man whose entire life is dependent on hockey, Scott slowly comes to realize that he can't hide in the closet forever. The chemistry between Scott and Kip sizzles, and the sex is plenteous (so so much, that I actually skimmed through a few steamy scenes nearer the end of the book) and totally off the chain.

The plot is a good one and I love the hockey setting, but too often we get a brief synopsis or small snippet of a play where I would have liked to get more actual hockey play. Since Scott is the captain of the team and several players are secondary characters (and the upcoming second book in the series is about a pair of hockey players), getting a feel for the on-ice dynamic would be nice.

The relationship angst here is nicely done, with Scott realizing that he needs to make a decision, and I like Kip's understanding, but his impatience as well. The ending is all sorts of sweet and the epilogue is perfect. All in all, a very good debut novel from Rachel Reid and I'm anxiously awaiting the second book in the series, Heated Rivalry. 4 strong stars for "Game Changer."

Chasing Chance (Gilcrest University Guys #1)

Title: Chasing Chance: Gilcrest University Guys Book One
Author: M.E. Parker
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: March 17, 2019
Genre(s): Contemporary Romance, Sports
Page Count: 175
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Read book blurb here

THE MORE YOU KNOW (shooting star... RAINBOW): The author notes: "Chasing Chance" is the first book in the Gilcrest University Guys series. It’s a full-length, “friends to lovers” romance novel. It has “coming out” and “first-time gay” themes, is stocked full of STEAM, heartache, and laughter, and it has a guaranteed happy ending. The series will follow the love stories of four college friends. "Chasing Chance" is the first of two books that will tell Andy and Chance’s love story. Look for book two, "Catching Chance," to come out next month!" Be aware that we aren't getting Andy and Chance's complete story in "Chasing Chance" and the ending is up-in-the-air and incomplete.

I must admit that I love the best-friends-to-lovers trope and the first part of this book is sweet as 6-year-old Chance and Andy become best friends and have a great childhood that includes camping together and building a great tree house that Chance designs (he's always been interested in becoming an architect). We get alternating POVs here and through a series of flashbacks see how good things are between the two boys ... until they aren't.

Crossing the Touchline (Auckland Med #2)

Title: Crossing the Touchline (Auckland Med Series Book 2)
Author: Jay Hogan
Publisher: Southern Lights Publishing
Release Date: December 15, 2019
Genre(s): Contemporary Romance, Sports
Page Count: 302
Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Read book blurb here

I love rugby so I was absolutely hyped to read this story of a young Kiwi rugby player striving to make the legendary All Blacks while struggling to figure out how to handle his attraction to his teammate's brother, all the while adamantly staying in the closet. Reuben Taylor is a young talented player with a lot on his plate. His father is a homophobic hard@ss who runs roughshod over his sons Reuben and Craig. Craig's son Cory is on the autism spectrum and needs diagnosis and help but Craig is too weak to stand up against his father and casts Reuben in the role of protector and provider.

When Reuben meets Cameron Wano, he is immediately smitten but believes he can never have a relationship with the lean, lithe charge nurse with the guyliner. Becoming an All Black and getting endorsement deals would finally free Reuben of his father's toxicity and provide him with money for Cory's therapy. But Reuben just can't face becoming the first out All Black and Cam won't go back into the closet for anyone, no matter how sexy.

Anything ... between us ... Is.Not.Happening. So what are you doing? If you want to keep your gay undercover, it's maybe not the best idea to be seen talking to the guy wearing eyeliner, and who may as well have 'I love dick' tattooed on his forehead. I'm hardly a shrinking violet, yeah?

I like the premise of this story but the pacing almost made me DNF this book.