Pre-Release ARC Review: Goalie Interference by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn

Reviewer's Rating: 5

5.0Overall score

I loved it!

Goalie Interference By Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn

Genre: Contemporary, Sports, Romance, GLBTQ, MM, Bi-sexual, Hockey

Releases: September 30, 2019 (ebook); October 1, 2019 (print)

Length: 75,000 words/297 pages (approx.)

Publisher: Carina Press

Series: Hat Trick, Book 2

Synopsis

It’s goalie vs. goalie in this brand-new enemies-to-lovers hockey romance from Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn…

Ryu Mori has had a stellar season as goalie for the Atlanta Venom. So when he’s called into management’s office, he’s expecting to hear he’s the new starting goalie for the team, not that some new guy—an incredibly hot, annoyingly bratty rookie—is here to compete for his spot.

Not everyone gets to play in the best league in the world. Emmitt Armstrong knows that, and he’s not about to waste the opportunity after grinding his way from the bottom to the top. If the Venom are looking for a meek, mild-mannered pushover, they’ve got the wrong guy.

Ryu doesn’t want to admit the other goalie’s smart mouth turns him on. Beating Armstrong at practice feels good, sure, but there are other, more fun ways to shut his rival up.

In this league, it’s winner takes all. But there’s more to life than winning, and if Emmitt and Ryu can get past their egos and competitive natures, they might just discover they work better as partners than they ever imagined possible.

One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

Warnings: tense family situations, racial microaggressions (called out on page)

Review

Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003

I loved it!

The first book in this series (Off the Ice) was my introduction to Avon Gale’s and Piper Vaughn’s writing. I loved that book so much I wondered how I could possibly like Goalie Interference as much. It’s a totally different type of story – enemies-to-lovers – and I did love it just as much as the first albeit in a different way.

I don’t think I’ve read a lot of books with the enemies-to-lovers trope, actually maybe none, so this was a great one to start with. When Ryu learns that he has to compete for the starting goalie position that he thought was his, he isn’t happy and he can’t stand Emmitt, the cocky newcomer who wants to take the spot away from him. Emmitt is thrilled to be playing in the NHL; he really wants to be the starting goalie for his new team.

When they can no longer fight the attraction that simmers between them, Ryu and Emmitt agree to an enemies-with-benefits deal to help rid themselves of their attraction to each other and to work off their sexual frustration. What neither of them expected was for their agreement to turn into a relationship.

Goalie Interference kept me glued to my e-reader into the wee hours of the morning. The story is fairly angsty but not overly so. Emmitt is bi-sexual and not afraid to have that be common knowledge; Ryu is more reserved and not out as gay. Ryu coming out isn’t really a central theme in this book, though. The story is more about the competitiveness in professional sports and how two people who love each other handle their competition for the same spot on their team. It’s also about POC (people of color) in a sport that is dominated by white males.

Ryu and Emmitt have more in common than their position of goalie. Both of them have family standards to live up to. Ryu’s father is an Olympic Gold Medal ice skater and his mother is a surgeon. They aren’t really unhappy that he chose hockey for a career but there is a lot of pressure on him to be the very best.

Emmitt’s father had a career in the NFL that was ended abruptly due to a career ending injury. He always wanted Emmitt to follow in his footsteps and has never made any attempt to understand hockey. Emmitt feels that his dad isn’t proud of the things he’s accomplished so he puts a lot of pressure on himself to win; he really wants to earn the starting goalie position and maybe that will finally make his father proud of him.

Trade Deadline is the next book in the series, coming in 2020, and I can’t wait to read it.

♥♥♥♥♥

O Factor: Scorcher

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Books in the Series

Hat Trick Series

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About Author

Avon Gale

Avon Gale lives in a liberal Midwestern college town, where she spends her days getting heavily invested in everything from craft projects to video games. She likes road trips by car, rock concerts, thunderstorms, IPAs, Kentucky bourbon and tattoos. As a queer author, Avon is committed to providing happy endings for all and loves to tell stories that focus on found families, strong and open communication, and friendship. She loves writing about quirky people who might not be perfect, but always find a place where they belong.

Avon is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan at Handspun Literary Agency.

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About Author

Piper Vaughn is a queer Latinx author and longtime romance reader. Since writing their first love story at age eleven, they’ve known writing in some form was exactly what they wanted to do. A reader to the core, Piper loves nothing more than getting lost in a great book.

Piper grew up in a diverse neighborhood in Chicago and loves putting faces and characters of every ethnicity in their stories, making their fictional worlds as colorful as the real one. Above all, Piper believes there’s no one way to have an HEA, and every person deserves to see themselves reflected on the page.

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