Season's Change

Trade Season, Book 1

By: Cait Nary

Narrated by: Simon Dornet, Lance West

A veteran hockey player and a rookie can't get away from each other—or their own desires—in this sexy, heartfelt opposites-attract hockey romance.

Olly Järvinen has a long way to go. He's got a fresh start playing for a new team, but getting his hockey career back on track is going to take more than a change of scenery. He's got to shut his past out and focus. On the game, not on his rookie roommate and his annoyingly sunny disposition—and annoyingly distracting good looks.

All Benji Bryzinski ever wanted was to play in the big leagues, and he's not going to waste one single second of his rookie season. Yoga, kale smoothies, and guided meditation help keep his head in the game. But his roommate keeps knocking him off track. Maybe it's just that Olly is a grumpy bastard. Or maybe it's something else, something Benji doesn't have a name for yet.

Olly and Benji spend all their time together—on the ice, in the locker room, in their apartment—and ignoring their unspoken feelings isn't making them go away. Acting on attraction is one thing, but turning a season's fling into forever would mean facing the past—and redefining the future.

Contains mature themes.

©2022 Cait Nary (P)2023 Tantor

Heartfelt Hockey MM story!

Would recommend to anyone looking for a heartfelt slow-burn, friends to lovers hockey romance. The story takes place in a fictional NHL called NAHA.

Plot: Olly is an anxious perfectionist with recent trauma who is traded to a new team, struggling to find his footing and regain his confidence while hiding what he sees as a terrible secret (his sexuality). His new roommate Benji is a warm, protective, golden-retriever type, who helps get Olly out of his head.

Thoughts: I loved the development of their friendship into something more. It was not a perfect story and I thought there were a few things that did not get fully addressed by the end, I wish the story had like 1-2 chapters to explore a few more things. But overall it was solid and worth a listen. The writing itself was higher quality than what I come to expect from the genre: some very evocative little scenes and turns of phrase. Overall I really enjoyed the whole book & look forward to more from this author.

Audio: The narrators were very good! Perfect dual narration.

Similar to: I think fans of Rachel Reid, Sarina Bowen’s hockey mm stories will probably like this one. Slower-burn, but great character development and author seems to be truly a fan of the sport, including many hockey details and lingo.

AHHH!!!

I so love this book, these characters, the writing style and this audiobook! I’m so freaking glad we got this audiobook and can’t wait for the next one.

Amazing performances! Relationship goals, indeed, with Benji and Olli.

Great Story; hard to put down, but…

Angsty. Oliver is so angsty, it’s hard to not yell at the book. Descriptions of setting and of feelings are good to have in books- it get that, but there is so much overkill on them in this it’s like “yeah we get it- move on” then it’s described AGAIN. It’s almost as though the author has a minimum word count in order to be published. Sort of reminded me of writing an essay in junior high where I would overload the paper on describing things in order to hit required page number. I probably fast-forwarded a zillion times to get back to the dialogue. It became annoying. Story is worth the juvenile overly described setting.

SLOW slow burn with great MMCs but not much payoff

Read this if you like flowery writing about the setting, high angst and low spice. I listened to the whole thing and there are redeeming qualities but I could have done without this one. The characters were well developed and I loved the relationship between them but there was waaay too much fluff about meaningless details of the settings and side characters with no payoff. There was also too much repetition of the same ideas - this book really needed stronger editing. Despite the abundance of detail about everything else, the spice scenes were disappointingly light on detail. It was mostly fade to black.

Too long and angsty

Slow burn??? Snail’s pace. I literally skipped chapters and didn’t miss a thing. One of the narrators made his chapters somewhat interesting, though far too detailed in the everyday interactions of two people. The other just adds to the tedium. I think the words “Buddy” and “Bud” must have been used 1,000 times.