Bar Down

Grand Marquee Manticores, Book 2

De: Stef C.R.

Narrado por: Jonathan Lake, Simon Dornet

A funny and spicy MM hockey romance about finding your family and yourself while falling in love with your best friend.

Eli Kalias has a promising future with the Grand Marquee Manticores as their primary goalie, and after two years with the AHL, he’s finally starting to feel confident and comfortable in his role. That is until his best friend kisses him at a New Year’s Eve party and throws him for a loop.

Ash Meyers is the impulsive party boy and also the best forward the team has had in years. Under the surface, he worries he’ll never be enough—not for his team, not for his friends, and definitely not for Eli. Yet, he can’t stop himself from pursuing something more with his best friend.

As they go from friends to more over the course of a year, Ash and Eli realize that falling in love might be more challenging than winning the playoffs. Will they let their careers get in the way of their happiness?

Bar Down is the second book in the Grand Marquee Manticores series of interconnected standalones.

©2025 Stef C.R. (P)2025 Stef C.R.

Snooze 😴

I’m only on chapter 4 and I don’t think I’ll finish this book. Narration is so monotone and the story itself is so slow. Glad I only paid a couple of bucks for this. Totally not worth a Credit.

Worth a listen, maybe not worth a credit though

I purchased a book for around $6 or $7 through Kindle Unlimited and whispersynk.

The first half of the book flip-flops between present day and the past storyline starting at eight months until the two timelines intersect a little over halfway. This causes for a slow start and made it difficult for me to really get invested. I kept coming back to it, partially because of the narrators but also because I paid for it so I felt the need to try and like it. — I did not dislike it from the beginning; it just took me a while to start to like it.
Eventually, the back-and-forth starting to feel less like two stories with the same characters and more like the ‘where we are now’ and the ‘how we got here’ (that I assume) it was intended to, and I was fully invested by the time the two timelines intersected and the story started moving progressively forward in time.
The reasons it might not be worth a credit because:
Overall it gives the reader (listener) with more of an outsider experience; hearing the story being told rather than being fully immersed in the story thus lacking the reader experience of feeling like they are (almost) living the story along with the characters.
* I’m not sure if it was because of the flip-flopping timelines or just the way the story was written/or edited, but they were a couple problems that were introduced and resolved, but other than that, not really part of the story.
* A big chunk of the character ‘redemption Ark’ was done ’off screen’ so to say. The past storyline ends two before the present day storyline begins and significant character changes happen during those two months and they’re alluded to, but the reader doesn’t get to experience it. —> This is likely because the story is about their relationship and not the characters individually. But for me, it’s easier to get invested in the outcome of relationship if I am invested in the characters involved in that relationship.
* there’s no real part of the story that would make me want to ever relist to the book.

If you’re looking for something to listen to it’s not a bad choice, but if looking for something to spend a credit on, I would keep looking.