Title: Season’s Change
Series: Trade Season: Book One
Author: Cait Nary
Publisher: Carina Press
Length: 377 Pages
Category: Contemporary, Hockey Romance
Rating: 2 Stars
At a Glance: My lukewarm feelings for Season’s Change are, obviously, my own, and the possibility exists that if I’d read this book, say, ten years ago, my experience with it might have been very different. The reality is that I’ve read this premise so many times before, involving various athletes and their sports, that nothing here is terribly fresh or new or original.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: A veteran hockey player and a rookie can’t get away from each other—or their own desires—in this sexy, heartfelt opposites-attract hockey romance.
Olly Järvinen has a long way to go. He’s got a fresh start playing for a new team, but getting his hockey career back on track is going to take more than a change of scenery. He’s got to shut his past out and focus. On the game, not on his rookie roommate and his annoyingly sunny disposition—and annoyingly distracting good looks.
All Benji Bryzinski ever wanted was to play in the big leagues, and he’s not going to waste one single second of his rookie season. Yoga, kale smoothies and guided meditation help keep his head in the game. But his roommate keeps knocking him off track. Maybe it’s just that Olly is a grumpy bastard. Or maybe it’s something else, something Benji doesn’t have a name for yet.
Olly and Benji spend all their time together—on the ice, in the locker room, in their apartment—and ignoring their unspoken feelings isn’t making them go away. Acting on attraction is one thing, but turning a season’s fling into forever would mean facing the past—and redefining the future.
Review: Cait Nary’s debut novel, Season’s Change, covers some familiar territory for readers of M/M sports romance, and if you love hockey, you get bonus content. The sport is an integral part of Olly Järvinen’s life, it dictates his actions and the way he moves through his world, and has since he was just a kid growing up in Minnesota, for better or for worse. In this case, things lean heavily towards the worse.
This book is about the life of a closeted gay athlete who lives in dire fear of being outed, and one of the issues I had is that there are few other nuances offered to his characterization. Olly is gay, Olly is a hockey player, and I don’t know much else of substance about him. I’d have loved to know him better. One thing we do know is that his time with his former team ended badly—attorneys and NDAs were involved—and it left Olly an emotional, physical, and psychological wreck. When Olly shows up at the Washington Eagles training camp, the team he’s been traded to, he is clearly suffering from anxiety and panic attacks, and those things manifest themselves physically. He is under so much stress that he routinely vomits and suffers from insomnia, not only owing to the event that prompted his trade to the Eagles but in addition, his father berated him for running away from his former team when the going got tough, not knowing the reason behind Olly leaving the Minnesota Wolves. His dad is, by nature, judgmental, controlling, and critical, though, so I’m not sure in the moment it would have made a difference even if he’d known the reason behind the trade.
Benji Bryzinski is a twenty-one-year-old rookie. He also happens to be Olly’s new roomie as well as Olly’s opposite in nearly every imaginable way except for their mutual love of hockey. Benji is extroverted and a lot more in touch with his feelings than Olly could have ever expected—Benji does yoga and mindfulness meditation and isn’t at all embarrassed about admitting he’s seen a therapist. He does these things in lieu of losing his temper and smashing other players’ faces in during games, but the end result is that Benji is a guy who isn’t afraid to give another guy a hug if he needs it. Olly needs it but doesn’t necessarily want it. Until he starts to depend on it. And wants more. Then things get tricky.
The big elephant in their relationship, of course, is that Olly is terrified Benji will figure out Olly is gay when Benji, and/or the other guys, might start to notice Olly doesn’t date or sleep with the “puck bunnies”, and I felt no small amount of sympathy for him as he struggled to keep his life together while he was very clearly falling apart. It wasn’t as painful to watch Benji get rebuffed time and time again in his earnest desire to help, but he does eventually convince Olly to try yoga, and it’s in this and other ways that they begin to grow closer.
Benji got a bit more in-depth characterization. His backstory was offered enough detail for readers to understand that he had a less than ideal childhood, and to see why hockey is so important to him. He has plenty of billet family to love and support him (I would have liked to get to know them better), but his sister is the only biological family member he is in contact with, and she was awful, selfish, narcissistic, opportunistic, shallow, vacuous, and voluntarily played the doormat to a husband who is also a hockey player. He routinely and publicly cheats on her, but it’s okay because he ups her influencer profile? In case it’s not obvious, there is nothing I respected about her. I’m not sure if that was supposed to be the case, but maybe she’ll get a redemption story as the series evolves.
The dude-bro-buddy-bud-broski-speak was overdone, and I do hope those things were addressed before final publication. I also had some admittedly personal issues with the way Benji’s “bi-awakening” played out. It needed to happen for his relationship with Olly to turn the proverbial corner, but it served Benji’s needs only and came at the expense of Olly’s already fragile wellbeing; he threw up after it happened. I wouldn’t say this was the best impetus I could have imagined for Olly to come out to his brothers, it might be the worst in terms of how it ignored his basic needs, but that’s where it ended up. At least they, and eventually his other family members, including his dad, were loving and supportive. And, after a bumpy start, to say the least, Olly and Benji worked things out.
My tepid feelings for Season’s Change are, obviously, my own, so if you’re interested in reading it, definitely see what others think about it. The possibility exists that if I’d read this book, say, ten years ago, my experience with it might have been very different. I hate not loving a book, which is no consolation at all to the author, I know, and Season’s Change did have some moments where it shined, but, overall, this one missed the mark for me.
You can buy Season’s Change here:
[zilla_button url=”https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9780369719386_seasons-change.html” style=”black” size=”large” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Carina Press [/zilla_button][zilla_button url=”https://books2read.com/Seasons-Change” style=”black” size=”large” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Amazon & Other eTailers [/zilla_button]
