Kip Grady is 25 years old. He lives in New York City with his parents after getting his history degree. He works at a Smoothie shop while paying back his student loans and trying to decide what he wants to do with his life. Then, Scott Hunter walks in the door, looking for a blueberry smoothie on game day. Scott Hunter is the captain of the New York Admirals, the local, professional hockey team. The team had been going through a bit of a slump, so when the Admirals win that night, Scott comes back their next game day for his lucky blueberry smoothie.
Kip is very attracted to Scott, but Scott is not gay and he's a professional athlete. There's no way he would be interested in Kip, who is pretty low on self esteem at the moment. But then they run into each other again at a fancy party where Kip is hired on as waitstaff for the night. The two decide to go get a burger after the gala.
And so it begins. Scott is actually gay, but he's deep in the closet because of the rampant homophobia surrounding hockey culture as he was growing up. FYI, I googled "gay NHL players" and found that the NHL is the only professional men's league to never have a current or former player come out as gay. I'm not positive this information is current or correct because I also saw somewhere that there was an NHL prospect who did come out--inspired by these very books. Either way, it's safe to say that even today you would be courageous to come out while playing in the NHL. Tangent: Isn't it interesting that there are gay women all over professional women's sports, and it seems to be much more accepted?
Scott and Kip are both nice guys, who are young, incredibly hot, and very much into each other. They have a lot of sex, which is described in detail, over and over again. In some ways, their relationship is perfect. But the problem is that they have to keep it a secret. It really starts to wear on Kip because he is continually lying to his friends and family. Eventually, he even starts avoiding some of his friends because he doesn't want to lie to them. Scott doesn't want to lose Kip, but he feels stuck.
Eventually Scott does what needs to be done, and in a pretty dramatic fashion. And they live happily ever after.
I listened to this book, and although there were parts I liked, I don't think I'm going to continue on with the series. I thought the narrator did an okay job, but he had different voices for each character, which I found distracting. I especially disliked Kip's voice. I thought he sounded like a Neanderthal with a weird accent I couldn't place. I also thought this book had more sex than story. I liked Scott and Kip's meet cute and their first experiences with each other. But then it felt like a big chunk of the book was just enough storyline to get them to their next sex scene. It was actually refreshing when their relationship began struggling a little bit over the coming out issue. Maybe I'll try out the show, but I think I'll skip the rest of the books.
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