Contemporary

On the surface this book is basically right up my alley. I love a good-boy-bad-boy romance, especially with one big punkass—see also The Nightmare Before Kissmas or The Entanglement of Rival Wizards—and the marketing definitely made this book seem like it would deliver! Our main characters here are Molly, a golden retriever type who’s recently moved to Seattle, and Seven, his heavily tattooed, avoidantly attached, black cat energy roommate. Molly wants nothing more than for a man to love him, and Seven is assiduously avoiding romantic relationships. What could go wrong, right?

Unfortunately, where this book fell a little short of my expectations is mostly in the characterization. Everybody in this book is a mess. Molly seems to base his entire self-worth on whether men find him fuckable and is embarrassingly eager and willing to date basically any guy who looks his way; Seven, as mentioned above, is extremely avoidantly attached and struggles with expressing any kind of emotion; Xander, Seven’s foster brother, has debilitating medical anxiety and an unhealthily codependent relationship with Seven; none of these people are in therapy or seem to have any intention of getting into therapy until literally the last couple pages of the book. And, like, you guys! You’re in Seattle! You can throw a penny in the air in Seattle and hit three queer and traumatized people on the way down! There are so many community resources and mutual aid resources that could help them deal with their traumas and they’re not availing themselves of a single one. Jeez!

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In a twist that shocks no one, I’m sure, I too have been caught up in the hype around the Crave television adaptation of Heated Rivalry. The show is fantastic, but I’m not particularly patient about waiting for new episodes, so I decided to cheat and get ahead a little by reading the source material while slogging through the week between episodes 4 and 5. I don’t know much about hockey, but I read and enjoyed A.L. Graziadei’s Icebreaker earlier in the year, which I felt would provide me with sufficient foundation–and besides, I had a suspicion that the rules and mechanics of hockey wouldn’t be, shall we say, the primary focus of the novel.

I do want to start by giving Rachel Reid her flowers: the characters she’s created are compelling, and the emotional beats of the story were more than enough to draw me in. Even though the story progresses through nearly a decade of time in the span of less than 400 pages, there’s enough genuine chemistry between the protagonists to keep me feeling connected to the story even with long spans of time in between their encounters. And because the world of hockey is, as I understand it, still an extremely homophobic and primarily white institution, I do think it’s great that the cast of characters is relatively diverse and that readers who might not see themselves reflected on real hockey television might at least see themselves reflected here.

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Listen. Here’s the thing, okay? Objectively this book series is insane. Like we have a fictionalized ultra-violent version of lacrosse that somehow has a robust NCAA network of teams as well as an Olympic team despite having been invented like 18 years ago. We have so much mafia violence it makes Goodfellas look like Saturday morning cartoons. The justice system doesn’t work that way, psychiatric medications don’t work that way, so much in these books just straight up doesn’t work that way… and yet!!!

I will say that in comparison to the original All For the Game trilogy, which started its self-publication journey in 2013 and lowkey you can tell, this second series—which focuses on fallen Raven Jean Moreau and his transfer into the care of sunshiney USC team captain Jeremy Knox—is considerably less grimdark. It’s also pretty clear to me that Nora has taken a lot of the feedback on the original series (there aren’t that many women, for example, and most of them aren’t treated super well by the narrative; there is a lot of language in the prose that’s reflective of the times) and is actively working to correct those things in these new books. I personally really appreciate that, and I think that attention is what makes The Sunshine Court so much more enjoyable to me than the original trilogy (and that’s saying something because I really love the original series).

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Once more with feeling: I love sports anime!

I thought this was a very enjoyable read. I’ll admit, out of habit I got a little nervous when we reached around the 30% mark and the main couple was already getting involved with each other–I’m too used to third-act breakups–but I’m pleased to say that my nerves were for nothing. Although there are real stakes for our main characters, there’s also good enough communication to get them through it. Things get tense for various reasons but never quite bad enough to actually tear them apart, which I appreciate as someone for whom “tiny misunderstanding gets blown up and breaks up the couple just for them to finally talk it out 20 pages before the end” is a least-favorite romance trope.

One thing I will say is that the “Note to Reader” page should have been more explicit that there would be mention of CSA, even if none is ever shown on page. Referring to it as “past childhood trauma” isn’t quite explicit enough in my opinion. There should also be a warning for terminal illness as this can be quite triggering to some.

However, those things stated, this was overall a really enjoyable read to me, with good pacing and fun dialogue, plus convincing intimacy between some pretty adventurous young dudes.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

This book really gave me everything I love out of a sports anime and more. Rivals to lovers? Check. Interpersonal conflict between players with very different ideas of why they play hockey? Check. Internal conflict as one character tries to overcome their struggles alone? Check? The slow development of close-knit bonds between teammates that eventually allow our heroes to become their authentic selves?  CHECK.

I am gonna be so honest, I don’t know anything about hockey, but I do know that I felt that this book was a really thoughtful handling of what I imagine to be issues within the world of hockey the same way it seems to be in many professional sports: a certain amount of baked-in homophobia, some fairly old-school attitudes towards mental health, etc. I liked Mickey’s character, I liked being inside his head as he struggled through these complicated feelings he has toward his dad’s legacy and the sport of hockey as a whole, and while from an outside lens I was able to say like “no dude you’re super overreacting just talk to him!” I could also understand why a depressed kid with a chip on his shoulder would have a hard time taking that advice.

Also, the day after reading this book I used the phrase “hat trick” in conversation and someone went “oh, do you like hockey?” so that was pretty neat.

Rating: ★★★★☆ – The book was great and I would recommend it to anyone who likes this subject or genre, and I am likely to re-read it at least once.

For a very long time my Goodreads review of this book just said “NORA!!!!!!!!!” and that still encapsulates many of my feelings, so let me just preserve that for posterity.

I saw someone on TikTok not that long ago refer to AFTG as a “period piece,” and while I did take quite a bit of psychic damage from that, it’s not like they were wrong. The original series was quite obviously written during a different time period when Nora was a different writer, and a long time has passed between her writing those books and her starting on these, so it’s no surprise that this Sunshine Court series has a slightly different tone. I think it’s a positive — the original books do have some language and themes that are reflective of the times (so to speak) and it’s nice that Nora seems to be aware of that and is handling things differently in this series. There’s more diversity, more thoughtful handling of identity topics, etc.

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