Hopefully, this is a travesty that I can fix as soon as possible-- maybe even in time for Wednesday's usual post, although I cannot promise that. HOWEVER, I do have something to hold you over for today's post at least...
Nancy Warren wrote a Harlequin Blaze named Face-Off in which three siblings each get a short-ish story. I read this book several years ago and was so irritated at one of the stories that I wrote a review of it for friends (and as a potential piece for a blog that never came to be called "Two Minutes for Bitching", but which eventually, in a small way, became this blog.)Remember that I wrote this before any of the other reviews on this site, which is why there are places I could have referenced things on this blog but I didn't know them yet....
Enjoy this standalone and wish me luck to find the time to write some more posts!
-----"Ice Time" from Face-Off by Nancy Warren-------
The
basic premise is that Jarrad MacBride has just seen his NHL career cut short,
at 35, due to a head injury that left him without peripheral vision. (If you’re
suddenly having Cutting Edge
flashbacks, you’re not the only one, but while there is one figure skating
reference in the story, that’s not the path that Jarrad takes.) He’s feeling
useless now that his career is over, and to top it off, his swimsuit model
ex-wife has made the news as she’s become engaged to an NBA superstar. To avoid
the paparazzi camping out at his LA home, he heads back to where he played
hockey, Vancouver. (The story never
explicitly states that Jarrad played for the Canucks, probably due to
copyright, but that’s the implication.) Jarrad’s friend, an amateur hockey player
who we never actually see, has asked him to coach his team for an upcoming
Firefighters vs Police hockey game. Meanwhile, school-teacher Sierra has been
coaxed into playing hockey, with a friend we never see again, but she hasn’t
skated in years and doesn’t know how to play. After leaving the firefighters to
their practice, Jarrad wanders from one sheet of ice to another and spies
Sierra, clinging to the boards in fear as all the other women leave her there,
and he helps her off the ice, pleased that she doesn’t recognize him. From
here, the two form a relationship that overcomes Jarrad’s uncertain future and
Sierra’s lack of self-esteem.
As
short romantic stories go, that’s a pretty good set up. And since the story is
only 50 pages, the author does a very nice job of getting these two characters
together (emotionally) in a way that works within the genre. The writing is
generally strong, too, which frankly is never a sure thing with Harlequins.
That
said, given that the point of this review is hockey, how was the hockey?! You
might be asking. Despite the genre, I actually had pretty high hopes because
the book opens with a letter to the reader wherein the author informs that she
used to be a freelance journalist and she interviewed “every one of the of the
Vancouver Canucks for a feature in their magazine” (4). I took this to mean she
knows hockey and has been around it a lot. (I’m also guessing, between that
aforementioned information and a few turns of phrase that she’s Canadian, which
would mean being surrounded with more hockey than the average American, too.)
But upon rereading the opening letter, I’m now thinking that maybe she only
interviewed the Canucks team members the one time for that one gig and that her
only real interest in hockey players are that they are “fit, tall and hot!” as
she put it in the letter. And fair enough, but it makes me feel a bit better
about my issues with the story.
These
are not issues who will bother anyone who doesn’t obsess over hockey, I expect.
The
first I can handwave away as something a Canadian, particularly one once in the
media, might understandably make. Our hero, Jarrad MacBride, is hounded in Los
Angeles because his ex-wife is dating an NBA player. Now, if she’d left him for
the NBA player, which is not the implication, and if the NBA player is a top
star and maybe currently playing in the … whatever the NBA championship is
called and for an LA team, this might all make some sense. But after watching
the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals and seeing the LA media consistently get the names
of the players on their own hockey
team wrong, not to mention the name of
their own team (the Kings inexplicably became a basketball team at one
point in the Finals, according to the LA media—the Sacramento Kings, to be
precise, magically playing … on ice and in LA?) I have a really hard time thinking
that there would be news vans camped outside the house of a former player from
Vancouver. Oddly, the character actually thinks that the media will be less
troublesome when he’s home in Vancouver, to which I say, Bwuh? Vancouver is
obsessed with their players and I’d actually believe those reporters hounding
him, but there he only gets a blogger. So that all struck me as odd.
The
second part I found troublesome was the meet-cute. Okay, so meet-cute is
inherently troublesome, but again, in the genre I can forgive the hero,
disgruntled with his own life, disgusted by the lack of teamwork amongst the
firemen he’s supposed to coach, suddenly swept into fascination by a woman in
hockey gear clinging to the boards. Sure, fine, whatever. Suspension of
disbelief and all that—it is, after all, a 50 page romance delivering what it’s
supposed to. But somewhere in all of that, I get the suspicion that Nancy
Warren doesn’t actually understand hockey and may not have ever seen a hockey
rink.
It
starts with Sierra skating on a “breakaway” – and I’m honestly not sure that
Ms. Warren knows what a breakaway is because Sierra “skated straight over to
the boards and started up the rink” (20). And “She had to guess the direction
of the puck, since she never took her eyes off her skates” (21). That’s… not a
breakaway. Somehow, the puck gets to the goalie who stops it and then the
practice is over, everyone leaves the ice, “except the woman with the
breakaway” (21). You keep using that
word! I do not think it means what you think it means! But fine, sure,
whatever. And this is all from Jarrad’s—the former professional hockey
player—perspective, so it’s not like Sierra is just thinking that a breakaway
is something that it isn’t.
Anyway,
Jarrad helps her off the ice, and they flirt, and then he goes and buys her a
cup of coffee. Which leads me to my next point, which I will fully admit is a
nit-pick. I admit it! But Sierra has magic
hockey gear. I’m serious. It
apparently dissolves AND wicks away sweat. I need to get me some of this gear.
I
once read a novel (a tv show tie-in, to be precise) in which the main
characters spent time nearly every chapter parking their car. And I don’t mean
that in some sort of interesting euphemistic sense, I mean, they literally,
every chapter, spent time looking for a place to stash their 1967 Impala before
they could go and do, y’know, stuff to forward the book’s plot. Apparently,
this obsession over parking the car came from the author’s annoyance that on
the tv show, the characters always had no trouble finding parking. It did not,
however, make for particularly interesting reading. So I’m not suggesting that
Ms. Warren needed to spend every other page describing hockey gear, or the
basics of how a non-professional ice rink works, but as someone who actually
plays (very) amateur hockey, I was thrown when every time the Sierra gets off
the ice her gear apparently melted away.
We
know she’s wearing gear; it was borrowed from her brother (whom we never see.)
When Jarrad returns with the coffee, Sierra is unlacing her skates—there’s no
mention of her gear being taken off before or after this moment. Now, it is theoretically possible to take off
all of your gear before taking off your skates. It’s unlikely—you usually take
off the helmet, gloves, shoulder pads, and elbow pads before the skates, but
the shin guards, hockey socks, and breezers afterwards. You’d have to seriously
stretch your hockey socks to get them on or off over your skates (ask me how I
know!) and while it’s definitely possible to put the breezers on over your
skates (my coach recommends it, actually), it’s difficult, and would be twice
as difficult afterwards. Nit-picky, I know, particularly since the author does
say “once she had her street shoes back on and the padding off” (23) but this
isn’t the only scene in which the two practice hockey, and I want to know how
this magic gear works. Not to mention
that apparently Sierra doesn’t sweat. Oh, sure, her hair gets messy from the
helmet: it “picked up some static from the cold and was levitating in places”
(21). This is with her helmet on. How does her hair levitate with a helmet on
top of it? Not to mention that maybe this is too much information about your
humble reviewer, but when I play hockey, my hair doesn’t stick up. Why? Not
only because there’s a helmet on top of
it but because just the act of putting all the gear on is generally enough
to get people to start sweating. I know that, despite her “breakaway”, Sierra
wasn’t exactly tearing up the ice, but she’d still be getting a bit full of
perspiration. So.
They
get back on the ice, with no mention of putting on gear for either of them,
until she falls and it doesn’t hurt because she’s wearing (magical!) padding.
(Note, I’m suggesting it’s magical because it’s suddenly there, not because it
works. The part where it doesn’t hurt when you fall—generally—is true, when
you’re wearing gear.) Things work much better this time around because Jarrad
coaxed the staff into giving her better skates. On one hand, I will admit that
bad skates are going to make skating much, much harder. On the other, I have a
hard time believing that there’s a super-secret stash of not-sucky skates
behind the counter, just waiting for former NHLers to ask for them. (Also, the skates she had on before were
described as dirty white, which suggests that she was trying to play hockey in
figure skates.)
Anyway,
they go and have a date and then they have typically mind-blowing romance novel
sex. Then they get breakfast at a diner where Jarrad eats multiple platefuls of
unhealthy food. I mention this because later in the story Sierra makes him
breakfast in bed and “it was healthier stuff than he usually ate and maybe the
proportions were a little skimpy” (56). Now, I don’t know any professional
hockey players. But they are athletes. Highly trained, highly paid athletes who
put their bodies through hell each season. And from that alone I would think
they would eat better than the “West Coast Trucker,” apparently a diner
specialty that combines everything on the menu. In fact, because the summer
hockey news is slow, I know that both the Vancouver Canucks prospects and the
Phoenix Coyotes prospects were treated to seminars and lectures (and in the
latter’s case, a trip to a grocery store) to learn about healthy eating. So
while I get that athletes eat a lot, I would think that Sierra’s choice of
“muesli and yogurt, or an organic fruit compote” wouldn’t be a foreign concept.
My
last complaint is that after another round of mind-blowing sex, they go back to
the rink at about midnight in order to have some private hockey time (no,
that’s not a euphemism) and then afterwards they have sex in the locker room
showers. Why is this an issue to me? First, no other time that Sierra has
changed out of her hockey gear has she even been in a locker room, which is odd
to me because every rink I’ve been to, be it for practice or just for stick
time, has had players use locker rooms, if only to keep the giant bags of gear
out of everyone else’s way, I should think. Maybe Vancouver rinks are
different. Second, upon being told to shower, Sierra says “Okay, I’m not sure
where the women’s change room is” (50) which makes sense, given my earlier
point about her just (having magical gear and) lacing up her skates rinkside.
But again, no rink I’ve been to (at this point, in my limited experience, that
would be 7) has separate male and female locker rooms. And third, ewwwwwww, sex
in a locker room shower? In an NHL rink, sure, I guess—they have people to
clean those up, I should think. But an amateur rink (admittedly one where
apparently they have magical hockey gear and super-secret skates and lots of
free time on the ice, apparently, because whenever these two want to have stick
time they never need to check a schedule) no thanks. Just the freakin’ locker
rooms tend to smell horrifically (oh right, people don’t sweat in this
book—when Sierra sees herself in a mirror after skating, before the shower sex,
she sees her hair is rumpled and her face is red from cold), I can’t imagine
that the showers would be clean. Ew
ew ew.
Anyway,
post-sex Sierra makes a comment about how Jarrad will only be in town for two
weeks, so it’s okay that he’s hiding her away from everyone, and he says he can
stay forever because he’s retired and he’s not hiding her away he was keeping
the Prying Paparazzi from her. They then chat with a blogger and meet his
family (the stars of the next two stories) and aww, it’s cute. Jarrad has his
sense of purpose restored (in that he’ll coach amateur hockey? And be with
Sierra?) and Sierra has her sense of self-esteem restored (because even though
Jarrad should be out of her league, he has fallen for her) and they presumably
live happily ever after.
I
leave you with the quote of the novel: “She
tried to hold on to sanity long enough to remind him of the importance of
protection, but he was already reaching for the night table and she relaxed,
knowing that he might take chances on the ice, but he wouldn’t take chances
with her” (40).
