Narrated by Kirt Graves
Trade Deadline is the third book in the authors’ Hat Trick series of hockey-themed romances that features players from the Atlanta Venom, one of the top teams in the NHL. I enjoyed the previous books to differing degrees, although I have to say it’s been something of a gradually downward trend; I really liked the first, mostly liked the second and sort of liked some of the third. Trade Deadline does have some truly positive points – the maturity of the two leads and their honesty about where there relationship is going was a big plus – but on the other hand, it lacks conflict and the romance arrives almost fully-formed so there’s no real build-up or development. I very much appreciated the first thing. I wasn’t sold on the latter.
At just thirty-four, Daniel Bellamy, captain of the Venom, has been a professional player for fourteen years, and given hockey careers are notoriously short, is starting to think about what happens next. After enjoying years of playing the game he loves at the highest level, and having achieved his dream of winning the Stanley Cup the previous season, he decides not to renew his contract with the Venom and instead to take a one-year contract with the Miami Thunder, a team struggling at the bottom of the league. Besides meaning he can move back home to Miami (where his parents still live), he feels that joining the Thunder and maybe mentoring some of the players and sharing his skills will help them to improve and will also fulfil his own need to give something back while he continues to play out his career.
Micah Kelly was Daniel’s best friend growing up, but their paths diverged at thirteen when Daniel’s family moved to Chicago so Daniel could pursue his dreams of a hockey career. Micah stayed in Florida to follow his own dreams of becoming a marine biologist and then pursuing a career in animal care which, as the head animal care specialist at the Biscayne Bay Aquarium, he has realised. He’s not a sports fan in any shape or form, but when he learns from a friend that Daniel Bellamy has returned to Miami, Micah reaches out and the pair resume their close friendship almost as though the intervening years haven’t happened.
In terms of plot, that’s about it. Daniel and Micah find that as well as rekindling their friendship, the old crushes they had on each other come roaring back to life. Soon they’re contemplating a romantic relationship, but they don’t rush it, which felt completely right in context, especially considering that although Daniel is bisexual (and has always known it), he’s never had a relationship with a man before. When we met him in the previous books, he was married to Tabitha (Tabby), but by the time Trade Deadline opens, Daniel and Tabby have divorced. They’re still on friendly terms – so friendly in fact, that Tabby decides to move from Atlanta to Miami so that they can continue co-parenting their two young children. I suppose the life of the wife of a professional athlete is one of uncertainty – Daniel could have been traded at any time and the family would have had to up sticks and move – so while I raised my eyebrows at the idea that she’d uproot herself and the kids so easily, it did make some sort of sense.
As I said at the beginning, one of the best things about this story is the maturity that permeates it. I liked that both men took care to find out about each other’s lives – their work, their social circles, their interests; in many ways this book isn’t so much a romance as it is one about what comes after as two people start to blend their lives together. Micah is a lovely, friendly guy who clearly thinks the world of Daniel, and has a career he loves, something Daniel is going to have to take into account as the story progresses. Daniel has a great relationship with his kids, Tabby is wonderfully supportive of his new relationship with Micah, and the lack of Big Mis, contrived drama or evil exes was a refreshing change.
But on the downside, everyone being so ‘nice’ and a story boasting little to no conflict did mean it was somewhat… dull. I did, however, really like the parts of the story that dealt with how the move affected Daniel in ways he hadn’t considered. He didn’t expect to suddenly turn things around and lead the Thunder to success (if this had been a Hollywood movie, no doubt that would have been the storyline!) but he hadn’t envisaged being viewed with such suspicion by his team-mates, or expected to find such poor morale and overwhelming atmosphere of defeat, and it felt very realistic that the lack of trust and camaraderie began to take its toll on him, too.
Kirt Graves returns to narrate this third instalment in the series, and his warm, honest performance definitely helped to paper over some of the cracks in the storytelling and enabled me to connect with the story in a way I suspect I might not have done had I read the book. His performance is well-paced, and he differentiates effectively between the leads, voices the female characters (and children) appropriately, and provides consistent portrayals of the characters who appeared in previous books (I particularly like the clipped, super dry tone he uses for Ryu). His interpretation of Micah is particularly good, capturing his liveliness and sense of fun while Daniel’s deeper, more gruff tones paint an accurate picture of him as physically imposing and more deliberate in his manner of speech. The one area I wasn’t completely convinced by was in the sex scenes, where Mr. Graves sounded a little… reticent. I haven’t noticed this before, so maybe it was just me (I’d previously listened to a couple of books with a narrator who ‘goes for it’ a bit more) – although there were definitely a few places I’d have liked to have heard a little more expression. The main thing is that he made me believe in the connection between Daniel and Micah; there’s not much romantic development in the story – they’re falling for each other pretty much as soon as they meet again – but the emotional nuances in the performance helped sell it.
Trade Deadline is a bit of a mixed bag. I genuinely did like some aspects of the story, and for some, perhaps everyone being so nice and well-adjusted and getting to live their dreams (that phrase is repeated a LOT in the early stages of the story) in a romance novel will be a welcome change of pace. But I’d have preferred something with a bit more oomph!
Caz
Buy Trade Deadline by Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn on Amazon
