Ep 17 | So I Read Black Hockey Romance Books | Book Review

Welcome back to another episode of Flip the Page! 

In this episode, we're going to be discussing black hockey romance books (never thought I'd see the day); specifically, two books from Deanna Grey's Mendell Hawks series, Sunny Disposition and Team Players. Plug in and see if hockey romance lovers deserve rights.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:40 Sunny Disposition
• 6:37 Team Players
• 12:43 Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:01

[Intro Music] Welcome back to Flip the Page, a podcast where I talk about books and give book reviews and recommendations. Specifically books written by black authors. I'm your host, Zo, and in today's episode, we're going to be doing something I never thought I’d do. We're going to be tapping into some black hockey romance.[DRAMATIC GASP] Lord, can you imagine? Personally, never really got the fuss with hockey romance books. One of my friends had sent me a snippet from Ice Breaker a while ago while they were reading it, and hockey romance had been blacklisted from my periphery ever since[obnoxious giggle]. Then, there’d been the whole debacle with that one TikToker and the hockey players in a real life and I just had to rinse my hands of hockey romance books in general because, girl, I was scared. what the [REDACTED] y'all got going on over there? Oh my God. However, I was convinced into picking up a hockey romance book when one of my friends clocked that Miss Deanna Grey- Mrs. who wrote Outdrawn, a sapphic romance book that I loved and reviewed. Y’all should go read it, had also penned a hockey romance series, so I decided why not? I won't be getting into the nitty gritty of the plot of the books, that I'm going to talk about in this video. But there will be general spoilers, so proceed with caution if you want to go into these books completely unaware. Deanna Grey’s series is called the Mendell Hawks series, and the first book in the series is Sunny Disposition. In Sunny Dispositions, you have Finn and Naomi as the main couple of the series. Finn is a college hockey player and Naomi is an online gaming streamer. Finn and Naomi had met online and become friends online. They don't actually know each other in real life. They just know each other online. But they have that level of friendship where they like, text each other, right? But they don't- they don't call or anything. At the start of the novel, they had made a plan to link up for the first time face to face. Not the moots meeting up. Anyway. They made a plan to meet face to face. But the night that they were supposed to meet up face to face, Finn had some big hockey game. And during the hockey game, he had been talking his shit, talking his shit with the opposing team. And the opposing team didn't take too kindly to that, because after the game, they jumped his ass in the parking lot and he ended up injuring himself really bad. Hit his head and got amnesia. So obviously he missed the link up with Naomi, and it causes this weird kind of vibe in their relationship, but they kind of just continue the relationship as is. What's interesting, though, interesting or weird because Finn is just a bit weird to me. Finn is kind of like going through an identity crisis in the story, because of his amnesia, but he doesn't tell anyone that he doesn't remember anything. He just keeps it to himself. You have him still engaging with Naomi is if he remembers who she is online when he really doesn't. Following his accident, Naomi ends up moving into the same busted ass apartment as Finn. Her best friend's parents own the apartment, and they let her stay in the apartment for a discounted price, if she acts as maid. Don't think too much about optics. Don’t think too much about optics. Don't think too much about the optics because Lord knows... this a black girl being a maid to these white men in this apartment. Don't think too much about the optics girl, get off the soapbox. At least say not all white, but still. Oh my God. Free. Free me, free me. Any who. So Naomi moves into the apartment. Naomi doesn't know that Finn is her bestie. that, mind you, she's still chatting up. They're still texting each other and messaging and kikiing on her streams while she's living at the apartment, but Finn doesn't like- Finn still keeps it hidden that he is her online friend. When it comes to Naomi. Naomi is very much a ball of sunshine. The girl is always smiling. She's always happy, always trying to be positive, but she has her own trauma that that stems from. Finn on the other hand, even pre amnesia is a man of a few words, to put it lightly, because emphasis on a few words. This man does not speak. This man does not SPEAK. He also tends to miss social cues and can be very anxious, which kind of plays a part into why he is a man of few words. When it comes to the plot overall, I just had to look past the amnesia plot because why? But okay, let's roll with it. Let's roll with it. It was an entertaining read, I would say, but it did lose me a bit with the progression of the relationship because as I mentioned before, Finn, he doesn't really speak that much. He doesn't really speak that much. So the book kind of lost me when it came to Naomi falling so hard for him, because I don't really understand what exactly she fell for. I just I'm looking around, I don't know what it is about him she fell for it because he doesn't really speak. Outside of the few things that he did for her, they had interactions that were just like, okay, so yeah, what is it about this man that you’ve fallen in love with? I don't know, but whatever. I will say, though, that in the latter half of the novel, when he gets more comfortable with Naomi, he does become more talkative. And their relationship is more enjoyable and kind of makes more sense to read. There were some sex scenes in his book, and I'm not going to hold y’all... the sex scenes lost me. Oh my God, the sex scenes lost me. I was clutching my pearls because it was just when Finn was focusing on Naomi's ass.[sigh] Y'all know I'm going to get on my soapbox. So sorry. I can't help it, but the dynamics of having a white man so fixated on a black woman's ass while they're having sex, at what point do we cut through the BS and call this what it is [REDACTED] Cut the cameras. Deadass. But outside of that, it was an entertaining read. It was entertaining. It didn't really gag me or anything, but I will say that it made me interested in the other books in the series. Especially having a window into other characters that popped up in this book that I know are going to pop up in future books. Yeah. So I gave this book a 2.5 out of five. That's kind of low.[ugly cackle] Anywho, moving on to Team Players. Now, this is where the real tea at, no shade. This is where the real tea at. This the book that made me say, “Okay, maybe the hockey girls deserve two rights. Maybe I'll fast track some rights for the hockey romance lovers into the Constitution.” Team players is the second book in the Mendell Hawks series, and this one focused on Aderyn and Samson. Aderyn and Samson are both, captains of the women's and men's hockey team at the same college. Aderyn is very much a lover girl, while Samson is a notorious player. Aderyn didn't really appear much in the previous book, just popped up I think twice, and you didn't really see much of her. But Samson- Samson's ass was in that first book, Samson's ass was annoying the [redacted] out of me in that first book. Even though, Aderyn and Samson are opposites in terms of relationships or relationships they seek out, I will say that they have a lot of similarities when it comes to their personality. Basically in this book, Aderyn and Samson make a bet with each other to switch roles. So where Aderyn is a lover girl she's going to have to try to be a player and kind of sleep around date around, right? While Samson is going to have to try to commit to a relationship, with Aderyn being the person that he's going to commit to. So you see their relationship progress throughout the story, from acquaintances to friends to friends with benefits to lovers and the story’s also backdropped with political hockey drama that was introduced in the first book in the series and Aderyn and Samson are caught up into that. Aderyn... Aderyn is a bad bitch. She a bad bitch. She's very much a sweetheart. She rides for her friends. As I mentioned before, she's a lover girl. And by that I just mean that she falls in love very easily. She's very quick to fall in love. She says herself, all somebody needs to do is hold her chin and she's going to catch feelings. When it comes to Samson... Samson, Samson, Samson, Samson., Samson... I can't lie. After reading the first book, Samson was fighting an uphill battle with me. Now, did he win the war? I fear he did. In the first book he very much came across as a dickhead. He just rubbed me the wrong way. And it wasn't- it wasn't anything to do with him being a player. It was more so his interactions with people in the book. His personality just seemed very abrasive and authoritarian. I don't know. I understand he the captain of the team, but you're not talking to me like this. But I found in this book you really got more introspection into who he is as a person. And you see that he's someone who's very committed to his team. And he's also very similar to Aderyn when it comes to caring about his family and his friends. When it comes to the plot around the bet... was the bet ridiculous? Maybe so. But I've come to realize with time that I've been approaching some romance books wrong. In the sense that... because I tend to read more literary fiction with romance as a subplot, or other genres where romance is a subplot. I kind of, I kind of- I kind of hold the standard of realism that I don't think can apply so much in romance books. Some romance books you just need to approach, like you would a rom com. When I had that realization, something shifted. It started to click. It started to make sense. And so when it comes to the bet, yeah, it was ridiculous. But the things that came from the bet. The pining, the jealousy, the intimacy. Yeah, it was a feast. I was- I was just eating. Just eating and eating and eating and eating. When I first read the synopsis of this book, I was honestly dreading where the plot would go when it came to Samson being a playboy and Aderyn being a lover girl because it's some dynamics I just don't want to see in a straight romance. I don't need to see any woman on her knees, crying and sniffling and clutching her stomach over a cis straight man. It's not for me. But in this book, the way that it was handled. Yeah. Aderyn, you're that girl. Listen, my sister fell first, right, but she kept them feet grounded. She kept them feet planted to the floor. I didn't have to tell her to stand the [redacted] up, not once. If anything, I was telling her to slow down and sit down. The way that there was kind of a role reversal because of the bet... It's just ate. It was so good. It was so delicious. So you have Aderyn who's typically a lover girl, realizing that she's catching feelings for this man. Right. But a man who's a notorious player. So she- she stays committed to being a playboy, you know what I mean? She tightens the [redacted] up. She says, oh, no. Aht aht! I'm not letting these feelings out. Keeping it locked up. And then you have Samson, who's a playboy, and you see him catching feelings. The way that he became a lover boy, it was bad for him. It was bad for him. There were times I was watching. I was like, damn, if I wasn't giggling because I'm eating this shit up, I would feel bad because... my sis is kind of doing you dirty. But yeah, no, I think I just love when it's the man going through suffering for me in straight relationships. Sorry. Blame the patriarchy, not me. I feel like when it comes to this book, you got to actually see more interactions and conversations between Aderyn and Sam in comparison to Finn and Naomi and a mutual respect being established between the two. Also, the sex scenes, ate down. They did. And the subplot with the politics of the hockey team, I did like the way that it shifted Aderyn and Sam's dynamic. Did I like the resolution? No, no, not necessarily. But overall, it was still a very, very fun book to read. And I'd recommend it. I gave it a 3.5 out of five, which is high for me. So yeah. Listen. One thing about me, while I'm hardly ever wrong, I'm not too prideful to admit when I'm wrong. Yeah, I had blacklisted hockey romance books from my catalog. Yet here I am having my interest picked by one, eating up another and waiting for the third book in the series to drop later this year. So yes, I will be reading hockey romance books in the near future. Anywho, if you made it to the end of this episode, thank you for watching. Don't forget to comment, like and subscribe if you enjoyed! Till next time. Buh-byyyye!