Unsportsmanlike Conduct

By: Angela S. Stone

Narrated by: Jack Raleigh

Hockey defines Owen Carter's existence. He lives and breathes the sport. A man's man, no one - not even his parents - knows the truth about his sexuality. When his teammates set him up, he resigns himself to the idea of a blonde bimbo.

The last thing the Owen expected to find was devastatingly sexy and intensely male cop Addison Krause. Addison's everything Owen imagined in the perfect guy, but can he take his shot or will he let the best thing that ever happened to him walk away?

©2013 Sarah Stonier (P)2017 Sarah Stonier

An okay story that wasn't helped by narrator

I was attracted to this because I love hockey and it seemed cute and had some potential. I’d not heard the narrator before, but the sample seemed good enough and it wasn’t very long so…

Short stories are hard because you have to jump right in and give a background, current action and potentially an epilogue in only a few words. They need to be tight, focused and really geared toward portraying one (or a few) certain feelings/points/etc.

Since this is a short story about a closeted hockey player, as expected the main focus is his personal journey and decision to come out. It’s also about falling in love and it’s also about being true to yourself. That’s just too many things for THIS story to accomplish.

I didn’t get a good feeling of connection between our MCs and their weekend relationship moved from zero to Forever way too fast without giving me something to believe in. There are some hot times and some “deep” discussions and then we’re transported to several months later.

I think the author would have benefited from focusing on only one of these major points and delivering on it than painting so wide a canvas.

Unfortunately the narrator, Jack Raleigh made this a very distracted listen because he kept switching his accent for Addison around and I couldn’t tell if he was German, French, Russian or a Vampire.

All in all I was glad this was short, thought it was an okay story with too much to tell in too little time and the narration was interesting if not actually good.

(2.75 rounded to) 3 of 5 stars