Review: Ryker by Sawyer Bennett

ryker by sawyer bennettFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genre: sports romance
Series: Cold Fury Hockey #4
Length: 269 pages
Publisher: Loveswept
Date Released: September 8, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

The stakes have never been higher for Carolina Cold Fury goalie Ryker Evans. With his contract running out, he’s got a year left to prove he’s still at the top of his game. And since his wife left him, Ryker has been balancing life as a pro-hockey star and a single parent to two daughters. Management is waiting for him to screw up. The fans are ready to pounce. Everybody’s taking dirty shots—except for the fiery redhead whose faith in Ryker gives him a fresh start.

As the league’s only female general manager, Gray Brannon has learned not to mix business with pleasure. And yet even this tough, talented career woman can’t help breaking her own rules as she gives Ryker everything she’s got. She hopes their hot streak will last forever, but with Ryker’s conniving ex plotting to reclaim her man, the pressure’s on Gray to step up and save a tender new love before it’s too late.

My Review:

I was planning to read something different for today, and then I decided I’d rather have a fun book, because tomorrow’s is so serious. But now that I’ve finished Ryker, I’m not sure I really DID pick a fun book.

garrett by sawyer bennettI read the previous three books in the Cold Fury Hockey series, Alex, Garrett and Zack. These are the key players on the fictional Cold Fury Hockey team, and they form a tight core group for the team. In those earlier books, even when the hero is being an arsehole or an idiot, or sometimes both, I really liked the books. The stories were compellingly readable, even if, or especially because, the guy really needed work to be a decent human being.

Ryker turns out to be the opposite. Ryker Evans starts the story as a really decent guy. He’s a loving and attentive single-father, he’s a great hockey player, and he’s decent to his friends. He absolutely adores his little girls and they are clearly the center of his world. Even though he’s clear in the story that the reason his first marriage broke up was that he and his soon-to-be-ex-wife drifted apart, he acknowledges that he left all the childcare to her and that it was a mistake on his part. His life is exhausting, but he realizes that he missed out by not being more involved with his girls. Now that his ex has left them all to chase after her new lover on the hockey circuit, he’s the girls only stable parent and he’s happy to be that for them.

The concept of the heroine, Gray Bannon, was a good one, but the results didn’t wow me. Gray is the daughter of the Cold Fury’s owner, Brian Bannon. She’s also a genius with numbers and a former Olympic women’s hockey player. At the beginning of her story, her dad has just named her General Manager of the Cold Fury, making her the first female GM in pro hockey.

So of course, now that she has just taken on a high-profile and highly contentious position in sports, what does she do next? Fall in love with one of her own players, entering into a relationship that when it gets out, will cause sports pundits everywhere to question her ability to do her job, a problem she already has way too much of.

Her credibility will completely tank when their affair is exposed. This is not fair, but it is still true. Unfortunately.

So this is a story about a hidden love affair that can only come to light if either Gray gives up her job, or Ryker, who is in his early 30s and whose playing days, while still terrific, are also definitely numbered, gives up his.

They are certain that they can only be together if one of them gives up the career that makes them whole? Who will make the sacrifice?

alex by sawyer bennettEscape Rating D+: As much as I enjoyed the other books in this series, even Alex where he was an absolute bastard but still made me smile (see review), this one was not just a slog, but it actually jumped the shark for me.

The story is written from alternating first person points of view. We see the world from inside Gray’s head, and then we switch to inside Ryker’s head. Ryker’s head is pretty level. He loves his daughters, he loves playing hockey and thinks he has a few more years left, he’s happy to be at the top of his game, he’s completely over his soon-to-be-ex-wife, and he’s fascinated by Gray both intellectually and sexually.

He’s a good guy leading a great life and is hoping he can share it with someone, who turns out to be Gray.

Gray, on the other hand, is a hot mess. She finally has the job of her dreams. It’s going to be a rough first year (and possibly second year) but she has things under control. Her plan is to build the Cold Fury the same way that the general manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team, Billy Beane, built the A’s. She’s going to play “moneypuck” instead of “moneyball”. Her concept of management through statistics has been proven to work in one sport, and she has the brains and the mathematical chops to try it in another.

In the middle of the toughest year of her life, she spends all of her emotional energy angsting over a relationship with one of her players. I mean she completely descends into mush and loses her edge. It’s not that I don’t want to see her get her happy ending, but her actions feel juvenile, particularly for a woman in her early 30s.

While the solution to their dilemma was very, very fictional, it also felt false. Either she is going to be pilloried in the press and lose the confidence of the board of directors, or Ryker needs to retire at the end of the season. He even offers to retire so their relationship can come out of the closet. While this is romantic, it feels like reality should bite somewhere along the way. She resigns and gets her job back, which doesn’t feel quite right. Yes, her dad is the owner and supports her, and they win the Stanley Cup, but if they don’t win it again the press will crucify her.

But if either of them gives up their career for the other, while it may be good for a while, there is a strong chance of resentment further down the road. This totally tripped my willing suspension of disbelief meter. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Zack by Sawyer Bennett + Giveaway

zack by sawyer bennettFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: sports romance
Series: Cold fury Hockey #3
Length: 294 pages
Publisher: Loveswept
Date Released: June 9, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Rising star Zack Grantham has been stuck in a downward spiral of grief ever since the car accident that left him a single dad and put his career on hold. Back on the road with the Carolina Cold Fury and still crippled by emotional baggage, he’s in need of some serious help with his son. But while the nerdy new nanny wins his son’s heart, Zack isn’t sure he’s ready for a woman’s touch—even after getting a glimpse of the killer curves she’s hiding under those baggy clothes.

Kate Francis usually keeps men like Zack at a distance. Though his athlete’s body is honed to perfection, he refuses to move on with his life—and besides, he’s her boss. Still, the sparks between them are undeniable, tempting Kate to turn their professional relationship into a personal one. But before she makes a power play for Zack’s wounded heart, Kate will have to open him up again and show him that love is worth the fight.

My Review:

Sawyer Bennett has a gift for making the reader sympathize with heroes who are being complete arseholes to their heroines, and for making us understand why those heroines stick around to redeem the guy who starts the story jerking them around.

alex by sawyer bennettThis is a good thing, because it so shouldn’t work. But as Bennett has demonstrated in the two previous books in the Cold Fury Hockey series, Alex (reviewed here) and Garrett (here) she knows just how to make it work.

Zack isn’t the complete Grade A arsehole that Alex starts out his story as. No, Zack is only a prick to Kate. And even though it’s easy to understand where he’s coming from, there are a lot of points where you want to shake him for his idiocy, and knock some sense into Kate for putting up with it.

So how does this work out?

garrett by sawyer bennettIn the previous book in the series, Garrett, Zack is in a major automobile accident. His wife Gina is killed, and Zack is left the grief-stricken single father of an adorable 4-year-old boy.

There’s a whole lot of guilt mixed-in with that grief. While Zack is lost without Gina, especially when it comes to little Ben, he is also kicking himself that he never gave Gina the one thing she really wanted – they never did get married. He knew she wanted to (and they had a child) but he felt something was missing – that she wasn’t the person he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with.

A part of me wonders what the hell he was going to do if he met that right person while he was still in the relationship, but that’s not what happened. However, that thought does not endear me to Zack.

In the depths of his still very real grief, Zack also has a dilemma. He’s recovered from the accident, and he plays pro hockey for a living. There are going to be a lot of days and nights on the road, and he no longer has Gina to take care of Ben. His sister picks out a nanny for Ben, and in a fog, Zack lets it happen.

That nanny is Kate. She’s a poor girl from a tiny North Carolina town, but she’s starting graduate school in the fall and needs the money. Her undergraduate degree is in child psychology, and she and Ben bond instantly.

Zack can’t stand seeing someone else in Gina’s place. He also can’t see how bubbly, nerdy Kate in her baggy clothes could possibly be the right person to take care of Ben, or to fit into their life. But she is.

Not just because Ben adores her, although he does. But she also falls in love with the little guy, and does a terrific job of caring for him.

It’s dad’s negativity and sometimes outright antagonism she can’t get past. Until Zack sees the very pretty woman hiding under the baggy clothes, and can’t make himself unsee the first woman he’s wanted since Gina died.

But Zack decides that he’s only in it for the fantastic sex. He tells Kate at the very beginning that he absolutely does not want a relationship outside the bedroom, and if she can’t deal with that, then she needs to tell him at the very beginning.

Kate is an incredibly blunt person. She lets him know that if she can’t handle it, she’ll tell him. And she means it.

The real problem isn’t that she can’t handle it, but that he can’t. As much as he keeps saying all he wants is sex, he keeps letting Kate further and deeper into his life and his heart. A heart he doesn’t think he has. And the more he breaks past his own boundaries, the more Kate hopes that there is something real between them.

Until he’s an arsehole one too many times in front of one too many people, and she tells him she’s had enough. Finally.

It takes Kate standing up for herself to bring home to Zack exactly how big a stupid idiot he’s been.

Escape Rating B-: A long time ago, someone told me that it is impossible to make love with someone and not feel at least a little love. Zack and Kate’s story is an illustration of that conundrum.

Kate has been hiding under those baggy clothes and thick glasses because she developed early, and got threatened by the guys who started noticing her when she was much too young to know how to handle it. So she wore armor and hid in plain sight behind her glasses and her bubbly sense of humor. Also behind her nerdiness – she’s a bookworm and happy to be one.

At first Zack just thinks she’s too goofy to be a good caregiver for Ben – and Zack has an understandable problem seeing another woman in Gina’s place.

He does start caring about her before he sees in her in pjs and discovers what she’s hiding underneath the baggy sweats, but he kind of gets obsessed at that point. She’s the first woman he’s wanted since the accident, and he can’t let her go, even though he knows their relationship is bad for her, and that he isn’t treating her well.

At first, Kate can’t believe that the hot hockey player is interested in her. By hiding under the baggy clothes, she’s mostly kept herself from having a love life. Having fantastic sex with a handsome lover is a welcome change for her. And she understands the limits from the get go, even as she questions how long she can manage to protect her heart.

Zack plays a “come here/go away” game with Kate that is very hurtful, and he knows it. While she puts up with his crap a lot longer than she probably should, her hope is also realistic. He does feel more than he’s admitting to himself, and his arseholishness is his way of navigating that river of Denial.

Someone still needs to clock him one. And Kate finally does. It just takes her awhile.

In many ways, Kate is the much more interesting part of this story. She starts out hiding herself, and ends the story by reclaiming the parts of herself that she hid. She is also very self-motivated, and does not wallow in grief when she tells Zack to take that hike. She’s hurt, but she never loses sight of her goals, and those goals are an education and a future brighter and bigger than her family circumstances would have normally led her to. She’s a winner whether Zack ever comes around or not.

But he does. I just wish Kate had made him grovel a little more.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Garrett by Sawyer Bennett

garrett by sawyer bennettFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: sports romance
Series: Cold Fury Hockey #2
Length: 278 pages
Publisher: Loveswept
Date Released: February 17, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, KoboAll Romance

Carolina Cold Fury star Garrett Samuelson never wants to miss out on a single minute of fun. Whether he’s playing hockey, hanging out with friends, or walking the red carpet with a new date on his arm, he lives every day to the fullest. When he meets Olivia Case, he sees someone who’s exactly his type—confident, sexy, smart . . . his next fling. But the more he pursues her, the more Garrett shares a side of himself that other women don’t normally get to see.

Olivia has been keeping a secret. While Garrett lives for the next thrill, Olivia’s not sure she’ll live to see the next day. She’s undergoing treatment for some serious medical issues, and she doesn’t have time for a relationship with no guarantees—especially one with a hot-as-sin womanizer who won’t take no for an answer. But as she gets to know the real Garrett, Olivia can’t help falling for him . . . hard. To reveal the truth would mean risking everything—but you can’t score without taking the tough shots.

My Review:

alex by sawyer bennettI read the first book in this series, Alex (reviewed here) as a review assignment for Library Journal. And it absolutely hit the spot. I just plain enjoyed it, even though the hero starts out as a complete arsehole and the heroine occasionally comes off as Pollyanna. They grew towards each other, suffered a bit, and found their HEA. As icing on the cake, the group surrounding the Carolina Cold Fury hockey team were a fun bunch, and when I saw Garrett it looked like a great chance to see more of them.

Which it absolutely is. And because this is the second book in the series, we meet even more people and the world takes on a bit more depth. (It’s also nice to see Alex and Sutton again and see that their happiness continues.

Garrett is Alex’ best friend, now that Alex has become a real human being and is capable of having a best friend. Or any friend at all. (Read Alex for deets).

And Olivia is Sutton’s cousin, and one of her best friends. It was inevitable that Garrett and Olivia would meet. It was not inevitable that they fall in love. They begin with two strikes against any possibility of a relationship.

Garrett is the “king of the one-night stand”. He falls into bed with nearly any woman who offers, but always flees by the next morning. He NEVER comes back for a second date. He’s definitely a man-whore, and doesn’t care who knows it.

Olivia has just been diagnosed with cancer. It’s a slow-growing, easily treated type of cancer, but still cancer. And treatable does not mean curable. Her best diagnosis is that she will go into remission and stay there for years, and that when it crops up again she can repeat the cycle. She feels like someone has just lowered the boom on the rest of what she expects to be a relatively short life.

When they meet, sparks just don’t fly, they explode like an aurora. Garrett seems to be looking for his usual one-night stand, and Olivia is looking for a distraction, but she doesn’t take him up on his offer.

It’s only after Olivia gets a serious talking-to by her bestie and boss, Stevie, that she decides that a hot, sweaty sexual distraction is just what she needs to feel alive. She’s not worried about getting involved with Garrett, because the man just doesn’t do relationships. After all, he doesn’t do second dates. Olivia is expecting one glorious night, and a good-bye note in the morning.

Instead, she gets Garrett back at Stevie’s flower shop the next day, wanting another date. She still thinks he’ll disappear soon, his record is three dates. She’s sure he won’t be around by the time she has her first chemotherapy treatment.

Instead, they form a connection, based not just on fantastic sex, but also on a shared sense of humor and the ability to make each other laugh.

It ends up being Garrett who holds her hair back as she pukes after her first chemo. So she finally lets the cancer cat out of the bag she’s been keeping it in. And Garrett decides that he’s way too interested in Olivia to walk away.

The story in this book is the ups and downs of their relationship as Garrett decides he’s all in for a woman and a relationship, and that he’ll be there for her whatever happens. Even after the death of a teammate’s wife brings home to him just how devastated he would be if Olivia lost to the cancer.

He thinks the pain is worth the risk. She decides that he will be better off suffering less now than more later after they build 10 or 20 years of life together. So she runs.

There’s more than enough stupid to go around in the way that Olivia handles things. Ironically, it is former arsehole Alex Crossman who makes her see the light, and give herself and Garrett a second chance.

Escape Rating B: Unlike Alex, Garrett starts out the book as a likable and friendly guy. He knows he’s a man-whore, he admits that he’s out for a good time and that sex is a very good time. He’s enjoying sowing his very plentiful wild oats. He doesn’t do relationships and he’s pretty upfront about it.

Because of Garrett’s track record, both Alex and Sutton discourage him from chasing Olivia.

Olivia has just been hit with one of the worst things that can happen. She’s 25 and she’s just been told she has cancer. She is reeling. Stepping out with Garrett is the opposite of her usual behavior. She normally likes to get a to know a guy and see if they have any connection before hopping in the sack.

But she has just discovered that her life is shorter than she realized, and Garrett is a big and gorgeous distraction from everything that has just gone wrong.

Neither of them expects him to stick around. Olivia never stops worrying that he will leave when things become too difficult. She needs him to be all in, or she needs him out of the way before he breaks her heart. No matter what he does, no matter how much he shows her that he loves her, she’s never quite able to accept that he really is going to be there for her if things get really tough.

Her act of stupidity is pretty damn stupid, but makes a kind of backwards sense from her perspective. She says she’s protecting Garrett, but she is really trying to protect herself. She’s not listening to that little voice in her head that says it’s already too late. But then again, the only voices she’s hearing in her head are the ones that say she has cancer and she’s going to die before she turns 45.

There is a tragedy in the middle of this book, and its not Olivia’s. One of the other players, Zack, loses his wife in an automobile accident. The event brings home to everyone that life is much too short. Garrett’s and Olivia’s reactions to Gina’s death cause the grand misunderstandammit that almost does them in.

As I read this book, I kept wondering how the author was going to get this story to an HEA. Not because the relationship doesn’t stand the test, but because the heroine has an illness with a median life expectancy of 20 years. I thought we might end with a Happy-for-Now. Instead, the author chose to write an epilog set 40 years in the future, showing everyone in their 60s and Olivia still alive and having been cured by medical advances in the meantime.

While I understand the desire to reach an HEA by whatever means necessary, the epilogue felt “tacked on”. One of the good points of a series with interrelated characters is that we get to find out how couples from previous books are doing in subsequent ones. The discovery in that is gone because we know how everyone turns out far in the future.

And yes, I prefer my Harry Potter without the damn epilogue too.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Alex by Sawyer Bennett

alex by sawyer bennettFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: sports romance, contemporary romance
Series: Cold Fury Hockey #1
Length: 224 pages
Publisher: Loveswept
Date Released: October 14, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, All Romance

Hockey star Alexander Crossman has a reputation as a cold-hearted player on and off the rink. Pushed into the sport by an alcoholic father, Alex isn’t afraid to give fans the proverbial middle finger, relishing his role as the MVP they love to hate. Management, however, isn’t so amused. Now Alex has a choice: fix his public image through community service or ride the bench. But Alex refuses to be molded into the Carolina Cold Fury poster boy . . . not even by a tempting redhead with killer curves.

As a social worker, Sutton Price is accustomed to difficult people—like Alex, who’s been assigned to help her create a drug-abuse awareness program for at-risk youth as part of the team’s effort to clean up his image. What she doesn’t expect is the arrogant smirk from his perfect lips to stir her most heated fantasies. But Sutton isn’t one to cross professional boundaries—and besides, Alex doesn’t do relationships . . . or does he? The more she sees behind Alex’s bad-boy façade, the more Sutton craves the man she uncovers.

My Review:

I just plain liked this one.

I know, I know, slightly more explanation needed. But at the end, my first thought, was “ooh, that was fun!”

Alex is a love story between two people who are both carrying a hell of a lot of very damaged baggage. The initial difference is in the way that each of them handles that baggage.

Both Alex Crossman and Sutton Price grew up with addicted fathers. Crossman’s dad is an alcoholic, and Sutton’s dad is a heroin addict. Note the present tense. Also very tense relationships with both of their dads.

But Crossman’s father is a functioning alcoholic. He continues to drink, and continues to emotionally abuse his star-hockey-player son, but no one outside the family knows about the problem. In fact, the old man was able to fool everyone that he was a really caring father who was an excellent coach for his son. No one else heard the abuse that he hurled along with the hockey pucks in all-night drills.

Alex learned to hate the game, even though it was his best chance at an economically free future. And he never learned to stop letting his dad call after every game just to pour on more ego-destruction in the midst of his supposed hockey advice.

So since Alex has known nothing but terrible treatment, he dishes out the same crap he takes from his dad. He’s a great player, but he’s also an absolute prick to everyone he meets. Even the fans call him MVP – “Most Valuable Prick”.

The team needs him to clean up his image, or they need to cut him. He’s just about abusive to the fans, as well as his fellow players.

His last chance is to be the team’s spokesperson for an At-Risk Youth drug counseling and treatment program. And that’s where Sutton comes in. She runs the program. She’s well aware that she became a drug treatment counselor as a way of dealing with her emotions about her own father. He is a heroin addict who sometimes manages to climb on the wagon, but so far hasn’t managed to stay there.

She loves him but doesn’t enable him, which is damn hard. But she’s used her experience to help others, not to wallow in self-pity or self-destruction. The high road has been a fairly rough journey, but she’s good at what she does and gets self-confidence and self-worth from it.

Sutton and Alex run headlong into each other. He may be gorgeous, but his personality is a real turnoff. And she doesn’t want to mix her career with her personal life.
Alex starts out just wanting to get through his obligation, and get into Sutton’s pants. It’s not that simple.

Alex enjoys being with Sutton, and the more they work together, the more fun it is for him. He starts to feel, and that’s beyond a novel experience for him.

He’s never had a relationship, and Sutton won’t settle for anything else. So when his dad gets too far into his head, again, and convinces him that Sutton is just a distraction from his game, Alex does the stupid thing.

He has to grovel pretty damn hard to get her back. And so he should.

Escape Rating B: As I said, this is just plain fun. Sutton is extremely upbeat, and it makes sense that Alex falls for her. Of course, he has a hard time admitting that he actually feels that much for anyone.

In spite of Sutton’s incredible cheerfulness, it makes sense that someone might have that reaction to her rocky upbringing. Some people follow in their parents’ footsteps, and some take the extreme opposite path. Sutton went to the extreme opposite, and it’s more healthy for her than the road Alex takes. But she recognizes that “there but for the grace of God go I” in every one of her cases. She uses her background to help others, and she’s conscious of it.

Alex starts the story as a Grade A arsehole. He’s an absolute prick to absolutely everyone. His redemption happens a bit fast in the story, but that’s part of what makes it fun. It’s good to see him turn his life around (admittedly with one gigantic misstep in the middle).

While it’s hard to believe that he continues to give his father’s continued abuse that much credence, it is all too possible. I’ve seen parent/child relationships that go just this way. Even when the parent is abuser, he or she is still the parent and the adult child is still looking for approval or at least acceptance.

It was fun to meet the other players on the Cold Fury team, but they are all a bunch of horndogs, including the married ones. No one seems to have a happy home life. While it looks like the series is going to be about the single guys getting their HEAs, I hope the married ones get hit with a clue-by-four about the way they are treating their wives.

Sutton does forgive Alex a bit too easily, but then, he does grovel publicly by reusing the scene from Love Actually. It is pretty irresistible.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.