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A review by indiekay
The Understatement of the Year by Sarina Bowen
4.0
This is a second chance romance for two childhood friends that meet again in college. It's also a sports romance with a big focus on the hockey that both characters play.
Content Warnings for alcohol abuse, internalised homophobia, past gay-bashing, homophobic slurs, homophobic teammates, forced coming out, parents kicking their gay son out of the house, injury, hospitals, hospitalisation of an elderly relative. Also uses the work handicapped which is an outdated terms now, but I'm not sure if it was still widely used when this book was first published.
It's not a perfect book, but I enjoyed it even with its flaws. Graham drinks too much as a way to self-medicate because of his homophobia, and that's never really addressed after he starts seeing Rikker more. Bella is a fun character but the fact that she's a team manager and then constantly sexually harassing the team isn't as cute as she thinks it is. There's one very homophobic teammate who never actually has to deal with any repercussions for being a homophobe - the coach says the team won't stand for bigotry and then no one ever does anything about this character's constant jibes.
Also kind of sucks that the book doesn't have an epilogue.
I usually only read queer romance but I did think Bella was a nice character and was curious about reading her book, but after looking at some reviews the book (as well as others in this series) have some questionable scenes relating to ableism and asexuality, and I don't think I want to touch those.
Content Warnings for alcohol abuse, internalised homophobia, past gay-bashing, homophobic slurs, homophobic teammates, forced coming out, parents kicking their gay son out of the house, injury, hospitals, hospitalisation of an elderly relative. Also uses the work handicapped which is an outdated terms now, but I'm not sure if it was still widely used when this book was first published.
It's not a perfect book, but I enjoyed it even with its flaws. Graham drinks too much as a way to self-medicate because of his homophobia, and that's never really addressed after he starts seeing Rikker more. Bella is a fun character but the fact that she's a team manager and then constantly sexually harassing the team isn't as cute as she thinks it is. There's one very homophobic teammate who never actually has to deal with any repercussions for being a homophobe - the coach says the team won't stand for bigotry and then no one ever does anything about this character's constant jibes.
Also kind of sucks that the book doesn't have an epilogue.
I usually only read queer romance but I did think Bella was a nice character and was curious about reading her book, but after looking at some reviews the book (as well as others in this series) have some questionable scenes relating to ableism and asexuality, and I don't think I want to touch those.