Scan barcode
A review by eesh25
Winging It by Morgan James, Ashlyn Kane
4.0
Winging It is about two NHL players (yup, I read another hockey book). Gabe is gay and in the closet. He has no interest in the shit-fest that would come along with becoming the first out NHL player. He's very focused on his game and he's a serious guy. Dante is opposite of serious. He cares just as much about the game and the team, but he's young and likes to have fun. He's also a lot more adept at balancing the various aspects of his life.
Gabe and Dante aren't two people you'd expect to see together, especially since Dante thought he was straight. But they kinda balance each other out. I use "kinda" because Gabe is pretty bad at relationships.
Part of it isn't his fault. He really likes Dante and he's afraid that if he comes off as clingy or too invested in the relationship, Dante would dump him. He doesn't know where he stands with Dante and he's scared to ask. He's also not the most perceptive of people and lets stressful situations get to him. That doesn't excuse him having basically no contribution to the relationship, but it helps understand him.
Dante is great. He comes off as a "party guy" but he's sweet and considerate. He's also pretty open about stuff and honestly, if it weren't for him taking initiative, him and Gabe would have just remained friends for the next three years until Gabe finally snapped or something due to hiding his feelings for so long. It's an interesting dynamic for sure. A classic introvert-extrovert pair.
But their relationship, as important as it is since this is a romance novel, isn't always the main focus. There's a large part of the book in the middle where we get very few real interactions between Gabe and Dante. The focus is the problems their team is facing and Gabe himself is dealing with as a player. And while, on one hand, I like the shift of attention to hockey and the team, on the other hand, I would've liked to see more of the two main characters together. And I especially would have liked more of Dante, whose presence was scarce in that portion because the book is from Gabe's (third-person) perspective.
Overall, this was good book. There was that lull in the middle but otherwise, I really liked it, and it definitely did not help me get rid of the notion that 'all hockey related, M/M books are good'. That's okay though. I can deal with it as long as I keep getting great reads.
I definitely recommend this one. And if you don't know much about hockey, don't worry, there's an introduction and a hockey-slang guide to help.
Gabe and Dante aren't two people you'd expect to see together, especially since Dante thought he was straight. But they kinda balance each other out. I use "kinda" because Gabe is pretty bad at relationships.
Part of it isn't his fault. He really likes Dante and he's afraid that if he comes off as clingy or too invested in the relationship, Dante would dump him. He doesn't know where he stands with Dante and he's scared to ask. He's also not the most perceptive of people and lets stressful situations get to him. That doesn't excuse him having basically no contribution to the relationship, but it helps understand him.
Dante is great. He comes off as a "party guy" but he's sweet and considerate. He's also pretty open about stuff and honestly, if it weren't for him taking initiative, him and Gabe would have just remained friends for the next three years until Gabe finally snapped or something due to hiding his feelings for so long. It's an interesting dynamic for sure. A classic introvert-extrovert pair.
But their relationship, as important as it is since this is a romance novel, isn't always the main focus. There's a large part of the book in the middle where we get very few real interactions between Gabe and Dante. The focus is the problems their team is facing and Gabe himself is dealing with as a player. And while, on one hand, I like the shift of attention to hockey and the team, on the other hand, I would've liked to see more of the two main characters together. And I especially would have liked more of Dante, whose presence was scarce in that portion because the book is from Gabe's (third-person) perspective.
Overall, this was good book. There was that lull in the middle but otherwise, I really liked it, and it definitely did not help me get rid of the notion that 'all hockey related, M/M books are good'. That's okay though. I can deal with it as long as I keep getting great reads.
I definitely recommend this one. And if you don't know much about hockey, don't worry, there's an introduction and a hockey-slang guide to help.