A sweet yet angsty teammates/roommates-to-fiends-to-lovers story! This wonderful debut makes excellent use of the hurt/comfort trope and slow burn build up. It took me a bit to adjust to the writing style, but once it clicked, I was thoroughly swept away by the story, the characters, and the author's voice. I flew through the pages without pause, which is always a sign of an enjoyable read.

I have a few quibbles about the pacing and one scene that felt jarringly out of place*, but overall this was an extremely enjoyable debut romance with two people who demonstrate that they love each other through every day actions, long before they realize it themselves. While this is a slow burn romance, the affection, care, and respect is palpable from early on in the story, which made for a truly romantic read.

*Note: there's one sex scene that I wish had been excluded, as both of the main characters were drunk and regretted it the next morning, which raises consent issues for me and which I found troubling. While the scene itself may not require a content note for all readers, I am slightly more hesitant to recommend this book on rec lists without addressing it in some way.

This was a beautiful mix of really hot tension and heartbreaking emotional growth!! I waited so long for this book, and it blew me away, and I am so happy!
Cait Nary can drop me a second book any time.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book.


This book was not it.
As a deep sports romance and hockey fan I was so excited about this. I'm always on the lookout for my next heartwarming, sometimes sad and emotional sport romance and the blurb had it hyped up in my mind.
I was not expecting to be reading a friendship book, because let's be honest there was no romance.
It felt like a long prologue to a romance that spanned over hundreds of pages, also weirdly extremely detailed hockey games ?!?!
Like yes, I'm all for good hockey games depicted, WHEN I'M NOT READING A ROMANCE BOOK AND EXPECTING ROMANCE TO ALSO BE THERE....
I love sports book, manga and anime, tv shows, HELL EVEN MOVIES. Just not when I want to read fluff and angst and romance and have the chemistry be palpable. This book was bland.
Frankly it felt like a lie, one of the biggest issues I had with the book apart from the lack of romance for a romance novel, was the way internalized homophobia was depicted, or rather the aftermath and solution of it. In no world is it solved by another person falling in love with you or being the magical remedy to YEARS AND YEARS of internalized homophobia and the hate that you come to associate with yourself by extent of that, there is no instance in this book where the author shows our character recovering from his struggles and growing from it on a personal level, it felt icky as someone who has had internalized biphobia to read , and just like a "oh I need some problem to arise why not have him have internalized homophobia" and a lot of "not sure how it should be fixed, oh I know let's solve it by him having it all resolved by his romantic interest" from the author which I AM DONE WITH, it is hurtful and diminishes the very real issues some people have to face regarding that.
Again, personally, it took me YEARS to really genuinely unlearn all of that phobia , those little internal monologues I had associated with myself and come to love my bisexuality, IN NO REALITY would it have been solved in some magical way by someone and the "power of love".
Anyhow getting away from the other points I had, which is the ending.
Again, if you expected a romance, look elsewhere because this, will give you a "are they in a relationship now ?" as an inner monologue because the book (or as it feels the prologue) will end in a, well not real ending, HFN that feels too short, wrapped up too quickly.
This is what could've been a nice soup, but you forgot the salt, put it in your lunch and now it has no taste and you have no way to fix it.
Overall this book got me annoyed and mad.
1/5 stars
Bookarina

Season’s Change is a male/male sporting romance involving the seasoned veteran Olly Jarvinen and the close enough to rookie 21 year old Benji Bryzinski.

Olly has joined a new team after experiencing upheval and is looking to put it all behind him. Cue Benji, Olly’s roommate who is cheeky AF and totally unapologetic. Benji is largely around for a good time though he and Olly form a fast friendship, against Olly’s best intentions to stay cool and detached. Before long the pair are inseparable but Olly know Benji isn’t gay and a relationship wouldn’t work. Or would it?

Cue the angst and second guessing from Olly who takes everything seriously and to heart. Benji is … well Benji. And occasionally f$@-( things up. As a reader I so wanted things to work out for this pair (Olly might be a veteran but he’s not that much older than Benji, let’s be honest) but knew Olly had to feel right about it. And he had to feel right about Benji making his choice freely and knowing the challenges the two might fade professionally and personally as a result of their relationship.

I was so into this book. Love it!

Season's Change by Cait Nary wasn't really on my radar until I read the first few chapters as part of a sampler paired with the first few chapters of the upcoming Rachel Reid book. I enjoyed the mental health journey set up in what I read, and between that and Cat Sebastian's glowing recommendation, I decided to give it a go!

Season's Change is a m/m hockey romance between two teammates and roommates. Olly had a really traumatic experience with his old team that involved his sexuality, which he has largely kept hidden, so when he's traded to a team in DC, he's a wreck. He's definitely not performing at the top of his game, but the coaching staff really wants him to do well, and as part of that support, have him room with rookie defenseman Benji. While Olly does his best to keep his quills up, he's no match for Benji, who's kind and caring and open about his own struggles with mental health and therapy. As the season continues and the two spend more and more time together, it becomes impossible for them to ignore their growing attraction.

This is an interesting book to review. I would say that overall I enjoyed it, but for better or worse, it definitely inspired a lot of strong opinions!

I think the biggest thing to note going in to this book is that it's a super slow burn. Like, they don't really recognize and acknowledge their attraction to each other until past the halfway mark. I knew it would be a slow burn going in, and I actually skipped ahead to the halfway mark and read from there, and I'm kind of glad I did that. There wasn't much build up to their romantic relationship in the first half of the book, so reading the romantic aspect and then going back and reading it from the beginning let me enjoy the development of their friendship and Olly's mental health journey more.

Also, wow, these two took idiots to lovers to the EXTREME. It took a huge chunk of the book for them to realize they were in a relationship. They really didn't talk at all about their feelings or relationship, which is a totally valid choice, but they really needed to have a good heart-to-heart by the end of the book, and they didn't. As much as I enjoyed their story, I really needed that heart-to-heart to feel confident about their ability to navigate a relationship together going forward, and so the ending was off for me without it.

Another thing to note is to definitely go in to this book prepared for there to be lots of hockey. This is not a book where someone says they're a hockey player and you never see it! For me, there was way too much hockey culture in this book. Which, considering it's a hockey romance, is kind of a ridiculous critique! But I know enough about actual hockey culture to prefer a slightly fictionalized version of it, but this one was very accurate, and sometimes that made it hard for me to enjoy the story.

Part of that was the excessive use of bud/buddy, the word "chirp," and various other slang, which kind of annoyed me. The other thing I noticed with the writing style was that "whatever" would punctuate a lot of sentences in random places, and I found it jarring enough to notice.

Another thing that didn't work for me was how the story danced around what happened with Olly's old team. I don't think I needed a play-by-play, but it would have been nice to see him tell Benji about it so Benji could understand better where Olly was coming from. Or even seeing Olly tell his family.

Spoiler ahead, but the thing I hated most about this book was the threesome. I think that scene should have been scrapped altogether. Olly had enough going on already, and having him freak out and throw up the next morning because of it just made my skin crawl. I just think there could have been a better way to get Benji to start realizing he was physically attracted to Olly despite not identifying as gay or bisexual.

Oh, and be forewarned that there is a lot of alcohol in this book. Like, a lot. And it definitely fuels some bad decisions, including the spoiler I mentioned in the paragraph above.

That said, it was lovely seeing Benji and Olly take care of each other and slowly become best friends whose relationship develops into something more. 

I also really liked seeing Olly's relationship with his family and how they weren't perfect but they loved him and were trying their best to support him. And Poiro! Their French Canadian teammate is great, and I really liked seeing him also bring Olly out of his shell and be another person in Olly's corner no matter what.

And it was great seeing mental health talked about so openly and to see Olly talk to a therapist on page about his anxiety and panic attacks, among other things. Benji started seeing a therapist as a teenager because of his anger management, and he was really open about it from the beginning with Olly and encouraged him to see a therapist, too, though you don't see Benji's therapy sessions on page. I can't speak to how well the representation is handled, but it was really great seeing it be such a central part of the story and how therapy helped Benji and Olly with different things.

Finally, not to spoil the ending, but I really liked how the team handled Olly and Benji's relationship at the end! It was too cute.

So yeah. I have lots of thoughts about this book that are kind of disjointed and all over the place! It wasn't the most satisfying romance, but there were a lot of things I really liked about it. I was actually a little reluctant to read it because some other reviews I read after requesting it on Netgalley made me think I really wouldn't like this book, and I'm glad I was proven wrong! 

I think if you enjoy hockey romances, slow burns, and a good idiots in love, this book is worth checking out! It seems to be a rather polarizing book, so hopefully you wind up really loving it.

(This review is scheduled to go live on February 21, 2022.)

Olly has extreme anxiety, panic attacks, low self esteem and almost no confidence. And his pro-hockey career is about to tank because of it. Olly’s past problems are slowly revealed, his teammate & roommate Benji tries to help him cope, and over time they grow closer. Benji is a sweet guy. I liked how much he cared about Olly.

But overall, I was kinda disappointed. The book was too slow-paced; it had stretches where it felt like nothing was happening and I was left wondering about the point of what I was reading. And I didn’t like how the POV was handled. There was no switching back and forth or staying with one character. The narration felt muddled and it was often unclear who was having the thoughts and who was being referred to; the head the omniscient narrator was in would change from line to line. The lack of delineation was jarring and confusing and just didn’t work for me.

On top of the slow pace, this was also a slow burn romance. Slow burns are fine but this one was so slow, the fuse and the match were in separate rooms for the first 40+% of the book. And for a hockey romance, it took the hockey part seriously (to the author’s credit, these parts were well done) but left the romance to go hang. It needed a better balance, in my opinion.

This needed to be edited with a machete and tightened up a lot. (The way the characters used the words “bud,” “buddy,” and “bro” way too often was really obnoxious.) There’s a lot of good things in this book: a great story, excellent themes and some important topics addressed, but for me it gets lost amid the weird pacing and meandering focus. I got bored with it, and normally I love hockey romances. I don’t know if I would recommend this one. With that said, it’s possible this could be more enjoyable to me on a second read because I would know what to expect in terms of structure and pacing. This just didn’t hit my expectations right on the first read.

Gosh, this was such a good novel! Olly had my whole heart and I felt his pain with the way he was bullied by almost everyone in his life - that man needs a hug, stat! Being paired with Benji as a roommate definitely was his saving grace even if their friendship and eventual romance had some hiccups along the way. I really liked the dynamic between these two and while I'm not super into slowburn, Nary made it work with these two characters!
If you're a fan of mm hockey romances, slowburn and the roommates trope, then Season's Change needs to wander onto your TBR immediately!

I started out not liking it and I ended up being sad it’s over. So reading kinda was a rollercoaster ride.

I can’t tell you why but the whole book I kept confusing Olly and Benji. Not the whole time but more often than not I thought the scene was Olly and then it was Benji or the other way around. Maybe I was just exhausted while reading, but quite a few days in a row? I don’t know.

So that was a small thing that made me not like Season’s Change. Worse was the plain sexism. I mean, yeah okay, I can live with some characters being sexist assholes because society is like that. But you can still portray that and have your character react to it? Just a thought. Cooking and taking care of people is also more than once linked to being a mom or a housewive.

But Cait Nary’s story grew on me without me noticing it. Aside from the just talked about things, I had fun reading. Also mental health not only plays a huge role in this book, I’m also satisfied with how it gets handled.

Actually, this might be my favourite part of the book and it’s probably why it grew so much on me. The other reason is that Olly and Benji are just… fun together. They’re two dorks who try to be supportive of each other while pining after the other one and not being perfect.

I cried and I cried and I cried. This was unbelievably, achingly good! I'm really overwhelmed and impressed by how hard this story hits. I felt Olly's anxiety deep on my bones, and even though my jaw was clenched and my heart felt like it would explode in a show of solidarity, I weirdly enjoyed being strung out and emotionally attached to Olly and Benji's journey towards love. Because realness. Everything felt like it was supposed to.

This was such a beautiful, slow, patient, emotional, love-you-down-to-your-toes hockey romance. With actual hockey. The sport. That the MCs play. Because this is a hockey romance.

Read that again.

This is not porn. So of you're looking for a dicking down seek elsewhere.

Carina Press is a win for me every time because everything they publish has teeth and gets me in my feelings, which is successful in my books because trash romances abound, especially MM.

Therefore I would like to thank Carina Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

CW: Homophobia, anxiety and panic attacks
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SEASONS CHANGE follows a veteran hockey player and a rookie who find themselves as roommates. Olly is looking for a fresh start after things went horribly wrong with his last team, and Benji is thrilled to finally be playing in the big leagues. Olly (grumpy) and Benji (sunshine) spend all of their time together, and eventually they realize that there’s something more between them than just being roommates.
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I love a good bi-awakening story. This one stressed me out, but it was worth it in the end. I found myself getting frustrated by how long it took Benji to figure it all out, but I’m not one to speak on that. It took me forever to figure myself out, too, and I’m still not fully there. Everyone’s experience is different and valid.
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I really appreciated how committed Benji was to working on his anger management issues with meditation, therapy, yoga and self care. It’s always nice to see someone who isn’t self conscious about bettering themselves. Olly’s journey with anxiety after facing the homophobia of his ex teammates was difficult to stomach, and seeing him finally work through that trauma was a relief.
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This was a fun group of guys. I’m interested in seeing what’s next from this series.
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4/5 stars, SEASONS CHANGE by Cait Nary is available now!
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Thank you to Carina Press and Netgalley for sending me an eARC to review.

This is so close to a 5 star read for me but there were a few elements that kept it from making that rank.
Olly is the type of character that you want to wrap into a big hug. He's a gay player in the Nation Hockey league and is afraid that he'll be out. He is paired up with an easy to love rookie who helps him get out of his head.
To be honest I almost stopped reading this . more than 1/2 the book was a bit sad and depressing. BUT it helped these two men build an emotional friendship before it became a physical one.
I was routing for them only to have them torn apart!
My emotions were all over the place and well it worked out for these two I would have love less angst.

I received a copy of the book for a honest review.

If you like hockey books with a lot of on page game time, Season’s Change offers plenty. We meet Olly as he’s coming onto a new team and he’s a mess. He’s been playing professional hockey for four years and he hasn’t found his groove because he’s always looking over his shoulder. After what happened with his last team, he’s on edge and he can’t sleep and he knows he needs to pull his game together but he’s struggling. Spending time with Benji soothes him in ways Olly can’t think about, but he constantly has to hold himself back with Benjj as well, as Olly has no plans to come out to anyone. As the book goes on, it becomes more clear that Olly has a lot of mental health issues to work through and I didn’t feel his issues were given the proper treatment for the severity of what we are shown.

Everyone likes Benji and he’s also a good hockey player. Benji finds himself drawn to Olly and their relationship is a slow build. The entire book is slow. Olly and Benji’s relationship is a slow burn as they establish a friendship and trust, but the entire story moved slowly. It takes too long to find out exactly what happened with Olly’s last team and it takes too long to understand where Benji’s attraction lies and the story spins around on itself too much for my liking.

There are several side characters that didn’t add much for me here, between other team members and Benji’s sister, and there were too many threads of storylines going on that didn’t go anywhere. The men also play for a fictional professional hockey league, with fictitious team names. But when they are watching football, they reference real football team names, and that didn’t all work for me. The POV changed between Olly and Benji, which I like to see, but there was never a clear indication that it was changing, and I had to reorient myself at times to figure out whose head we were in. The emotion also stayed the same throughout the book and no matter what was going in the story, everything came across as being on the same level.

The book did have its moments and picked up in the last 20%. However, I found it too slow overall with not enough relationship shown by the end of the book. The romantic arc for Olly and Benji didn’t feel complete to me and while there is another book coming in the series, it has not been revealed if Olly and Benji’s story will continue there.

I'm absolutely obsessed with hockey romances and this was no exception!! I loved getting to know Olly, who has truly received the short end of the stick growing up. I loved him as a character, and I loved the dynamics of Olly and his love interest throughout the story. There was angst, fluff, and such a great love story. I love a good roommates story--this was fantastic! I did think the writing could've used one more round of revision to make the prose better, but other than that I had a great reading experience. Thank you for the ARC :)

Season’s Change is the début novel from Cait Nary, a sports romance set in the world of professional hockey that follows veteran (at twenty-four!) player Olly Järvinen and rookie Benji Bryzinski through a hockey season as they go from roommates to friends to lovers. It gets off to an incredibly strong start and I was utterly captivated by the characters and their UST-laden and slightly angsty slow-burn romance, but around the two-thirds mark, things began to slow down and became repetitive. Had the book ended as strongly as it began, it would have been an easy DIK, but as it is, I had to knock the grade down for a number of unresolved issues and most of all, the way what had been such a promising romance limps along to a not-completely-satisfying HFN.

When we meet him at the beginning of the book, Olly is a mess. He’s been playing professional hockey for three years, and is just starting out with the Washington Eagles, but weeks of not sleeping and not eating properly on top of extreme anxiety and stress following an incident at his previous team in Minnesota mean he’s not in a good place physically or mentally. He’s determined to push through it though, to make a fresh start and leave the past behind, to – as his Dad has so often said – toughen up, and focus on getting his career back on track.

Benjy is twenty-one and all he’s ever wanted to do is to play hockey. He might be “just a dumbass from Duncannon, Pennsylvania”, but he’s bright, he’s keen and he’s determined to make the most of every minute of his rookie season. He hits it off with his teammates straight away, although his new roommate Olly Järvinen takes a bit longer to warm up to him.

Season’s Change is a friends-to-lovers story which, as I said at the beginning, starts extremely well. Olly has some serious issues to deal with, which the author reveals gradually to have stemmed from a homophobic roommate and coach in Minnesota who bullied and assaulted him when they found out he was gay. By this point, he’s absolutely terrified of anyone else finding out about his sexuality, and he fervently believes he can’t be queer and be a hockey player, so he’s decided he’s got to put that part of himself on the back-burner until he retires. It’s been fairly easy to do that; despite spending so much time around well-built attractive men, he’s never been tempted to hook up with any of them… until now. Benjy is all sunshine to Olly’s gloom; he’s honest and good-natured and funny (and hot) and becomes a very good friend, someone Olly can turn to and lean on when he’s at his lowest. But Benji is straight – and even if he wasn’t, he’s off limits.

The progression of Olly and Benji’s relationship in the first part of the book is very well done. Their friendship is superbly written and their romance is a fantastic slow-burn with lots of longing and chemistry and sexual tension that leaps off the page. I loved it.

But things start to fall apart in the last third of the book – which means it’s difficult to talk about specifics because we’re into spoiler territory, but I’ll do my best! The biggest problem is that the romance, having been built up so beautifully in the first part of the story, stalls and doesn’t go anywhere until the very end. There’s too much repetition and extraneous detail taking up word-count that should have been used to bring the romance to a satisfactory conclusion instead of the flimsy HFN it gets at pretty much the last minute. In a book of almost 400 pages, there should have been plenty of time for the author to get the leads together and show us a happier Olly doing a better job of managing his mental health and realising he can have all the things he’s dreamed of having with Benjy. We don’t get to see them navigating life as a couple and truly being themselves, and we don’t get the chance to relax and be happy for them before the book is over. Given everything they go through, they don’t get the ending they deserve, and that’s a crying shame.

It bothered me that when Olly and Benji finally start a sexual relationship, Olly thinks it’s just a case of them ‘helping each other out’ and that Benji is straight and will eventually find a woman he wants to be with. He never tells Benji he’s gay – in fact, they never talk about what they’re doing at all – and I found it hard to believe that Benjy never once wonders if Olly is queer. And Benjy talks about having fooled around with guys before and having had threesomes with girls and guys, but it never occurs to him that he might be bisexual until the very end.

Speaking of threesomes… There’s one in the book, and it felt like a scene of dubious consent. Benji brings home a woman and convinces a very sad, very drunk Olly to have a threesome (MFM – she blows Olly while Benjy fucks her.) Olly has never been with a woman in his life and has never wanted to, and is so distressed in the morning that he immediately throws up and spends days after avoiding Benji. I didn’t see the point of it and it felt unnecessary cruel given everything Olly is going through. It made me really uncomfortable.

Other smaller niggles. This is a sports romance, and I know that hockey fans will probably disagree with me, but there is too much hockey stuff in the last third of the book. I freely admit I’m not into sports (and know next to nothing about ice hockey) BUT my issue isn’t so much with the inclusion of sports-related detail – I accept that a story built around hockey will have stuff about hockey in it! – it’s that it uses valuable word count that could instead have been spent building a proper HEA for Olly and Benjy.

Probably going along with the ‘hockey stuff’ is the ‘bro speak’; maybe it’s accurate, but I found it irritating (and sometimes incomprehensible!), and the same is true of Benjy’s tendency to, like, use the word “like” in every, like, sentence.

Assigning a final grade to Season’s Change was difficult. The first two-thirds is DIK standard, the central characters are engaging and their romance – up until they start having sex – is gorgeous and frustrating and they have chemistry by the bucket-load . The author creates a wonderful team camaraderie, the writing is strong overall and Olly’s anxiety and fears are presented skilfully and sympathetically. The complicated family dynamics are well done, too – Olly has one of those pushy ‘hockey dads’ who is always on at him to do more and do better, and Benjy’s sister is in a toxic relationship and can’t or won’t admit it. This plotline doesn’t reach a firm conclusion, but that feels realistic and I liked the way Ms. Nait handles this complex situation.

But while Season’s Change has a lot of really good things going for it, the final third and the ending drop down into C territory, so I’m going with a low-end B overall. It’s worth checking out if you’re into hockey romances and looking for a new author to try, but I can’t recommend it without reservations.

Grade: B- / 3.5 stars

Hockey, slow-burn, friends to lovers, not a typical sports romance, sexy, mental wellness.

This was fantastic but you need to keep in mind that it’s not your typical sports romance. There are most of the elements you’d find in a sports romance, steamy sexy scenes, two very attractive main characters, conflict and of course hockey. However, it doesn’t have the same rhythm that a slow burn, friends-to-lovers romance has. Rather this stroys flows with the hockey season and I really enjoyed the change in tempo. It was beautiful and heartwarming to watch both of them fall for each other. Benji’s attraction both emotionally and physically towards Olly felt natural and unforced and I loved seeing it unfold slowly and organically.

There is a lot of hockey and I mean a lot, which thrilled me. Also, a large portion of the book focuses on Olly’s mental health and it can get really intense. I felt the final conflict and resolution to be a bit rushed and I wanted more dialogue from their heart to heart at the end about Olly and what he went through on his previous team. There is no epilogue and has a few loose ends that are not typical for romance. Yet the ending for Benji and OIly is happy and won't leave you unsatisfied. There is a second book coming out this year however it’s about a different player on a different team and I can only cross all my fingers and toes and hope that Nary will find some way to weave Benji and Olly into the story just a bit or maybe we’ll get a sweet holiday Novella or something of the like.

Special thank you to #NetGalley, #CaitNary and #CarinaPress for sharing this digital copy for my honest thoughts on #SeasonsChange.

Starts off slow and rather repetitive, but it grows on you and it's a pretty good debut.

This is a tale that whilst it doesn't stand out from all the other hockey romances out there, has a lot more heart and a lot more feelings in it, because it has a Benji in it. 21yo, sweet, open, anything-goes Benji who seems to like anyone and everyone, who's a decent guy and who cares about the roomie he's been paired with, Olly, who clearly has many deeply hidden issues. Their friendship does feel a little one-sided at the start, but that's because Olly is so closed off in so many ways (and sadly, I didn't get all of them, as the author hinted and didn't show and didn't tell), though that didn't last long with Benji and his utter blindness about boundaries.

It doesn't have toxic masculinity in it and I don't think I've read about another bunch of teammates who're so open and willing to support and be there for both leads, and that made a refreshing change from the routine homophobe or few. But, pacing was a bit off and at times, I wondered if we'd ever get to the point of the tale. We do, and don't in some ways, as there were many points. Olly's mental health, his relationship with his dad, with his family, with his former club, with the PR guys at this club, etc. and it got a bit tiresome. I mean, how many crosses can one guy bear?

But, without there being a magic wand, things do work out and you get the start of what promises to be a sweet romance and relationship. But, there was no hint of a HEA and I didn't get the vibe that there would be more in this tale, but that didn't detract from a decent debut - it would have been a 4* if the editing had been sharper.

ARC courtesy of Carina Press and NetGalley, for my reading pleasure.

As a huge fan of Rachel Reid's Game Changers hockey romance series, when @twiceuponabook recommended this one to me, I knew I had to give it a go. While a bit sweeter and with a slower burn, this book filled the void while I waited for the release of The Long Game. It's a little bit on the long side, but it seems intentional, to give these two characters the time they needed to grow as individuals and together.

In this story, we see closeted gay hockey star Olly starting on a new team after being forced to leave his old team after being outed. Under the threat of legal action, his secret is safe--for now--but it becomes harder to keep as he develops feelings for his rookie roommate. Benji is just happy to have made it to the NHL and is the quintessential happy-go-lucky gentle giant. He's not a relationship guy, so even if Olly's wishes came true and he wasn't straight, Olly knows it still wouldn't work out.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and for fans of M/M sports romance, this is sure to be winner. And don't let it's cover fool you--while certainly open door, this tender-hearted romance brings the emotion.

Thanks to Carina Press for my eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 stars - 8/10

This book was exactly what I had hoped for. I am a sucker for a well written “Sunshine/Grump” trope, and this DELIVERED. Well rounded characters, a nuanced slow-burn romance, and beautifully handled depictions of internalized homophobia. I am so excited to add this title to my “queer themes across the genres” table, and to hand-sell it with gusto! Can’t wait to read more from this author!

TW: Anxiety, Depression, Homophobia

Representation – One character is gay (closeted) the other has a bi-awakening in this book.

First off I want to say I loved the cover of Season’s Change and the synopsis drew me in and while I did like this book I didn’t love it. Both characters have a lot of baggage, on top of that one character is gay and had a bad experience with his last team and worries that any minute he’ll be outed. I loved that this book focused a lot on mental health issues in men who are professional athletes. It’s easy to assume because they have a lot of money that their lives are golden and we all know that’s not the case, but it isn’t ever really discussed. My issues with this book is that when I read a romance, while I don’t mind some conflict and a bit of angst, I want good times and those were few and far between in this book. In fact this book was pretty depressing. I also felt cheated because these two men spend the majority of the book building a friendship, then falling into a physical relationship only for it to blow up, and then apart again so we never really get to see them out and as a couple. After everything they went through I needed that, I needed to see them together and happy and working on being present in each other’s lives.

I loved Ollie’s family except his dad and even he made an effort towards the end which I was glad to see. Benji’s sister was just a flat out b*tch and I hated the way she treated him and made him feel bad when he tried to tell her what he needed from her. She was toxic and he deserved better. Their teammates, I loved them even the prickly ones. There were so many distinct personalities but I felt their closeness, I loved how concerned they were for Ollie. I’ll be honest, I wanted to hug Ollie, his depression and panic attacks were brutal and I was so thankful that Benji clued in right away that something was very wrong with him and worked to help him. Benji was the type of hero I adore; good guy through and through, eternally optimistic but not without his own issues.

While I appreciate when sports romances actually have scenes with the sport being played, for me this one concentrated too much on the hockey which did nothing to further the relationship part of the story. Yes, it was obvious the author knows her hockey, but I wanted to see these characters truly communicate more. I wanted them to discuss their road trip “sleepovers” where they actually did sleep and what that meant. I would have loved to see one of Ollie’s therapy sessions. I wanted Benji to look at the pictures of the two of them as see how happy they both looked and get a clue. I wanted them to really talk about that painful threesome and for Ollie to be pissed he was drawn into it. I wanted Ollie to confess earlier to Benji that he was gay and for Benji to hug him and say, “It’s all good bro.” I just wanted more of the two of them actually being close in all ways.

I know if seems like I’m tearing this book apart, but I’m really not. Season’s Change had good bones it just needed some tweaks to make it great. The two main characters were well written and I loved them, the secondary characters were amazing, their story could have been a romance for the ages but it got lost in the many, many hockey scenes and the haze of Ollie’s depression. That being said, I am not sorry I read this book and I will be first in line to read the next book in this series.

Season’s Change is a relatively unusual (hockey) romance – the focus on mental health of the main characters is amazing! Hockey (and sports in general) are notorious for not caring about players’ mental health much, and it is often overlooked or even judged to the point that people do not talk about it. While some places may have improved, it is still generally true. And not to mention how the book deals with other of toxic behaviour in hockey? Amazing!

Which is why I really loved all the focus on how mental health issues are talked about, and how they are dealt with. Olly, after a Very Bad season, comes to a new team – a team where the coach encourages him to do something about his mental health and who is understanding – to the point of telling Olly not to worry about making the roster, that they knew he might struggle for a while! And even telling Olly to get a therapist!

Now enter Benji, a rookie who is just a rainbowy sunshine most of the time (there are *some* exceptions), and a guy who freely admits that he has gone to the sport psychologist and even a regular psychologist! And he is ready to do anything that would make his game better. He knew hockey was his only way out of the life he and his sister had before, with irresponsible mother and … well, bad situation.

Benji is a great roommate, and a great friend to Olly, even if he doesn’t always understand why Olly is like he is! (which is partly on Olly for not sharing anything more but it is understandable). There is also Poiro, a French-Canadian who is just so OVER THE TOP DRAMATIC, but also a great friend to Olly, his second best friend on the team. He gives Benji the shovel talk, and he cares about Olly.

With his history, it is understandable why Olly struggles with team and in a way, his sexuality – he knows he is gay but he is convinced no one can know or he’d be out. Despite the fact that his coach has basically told him that wasn’t going to happen. Benji can’t understand why Olly tenses every time people call them codependent or make jokes about Olly being Benji’s “wifey”.

To be fair, Benji is just very oblivious – because hugging his teammate, sleeping in his room and his bed when they go out, is utterly normal and hetero behaviour. It’s funny to read, especially when the reader can see Benji slowly approaching the revelation but still needs his billet mom to tell him he loves Olly, after quite some time of exclusively hooking up and everything. And I love that Benji didn’t have a sexuality crisis but just accepted his bisexuality, because it fits his character!

And I really liked the sentences in “( )” because it felt perfect to show what the characters thought in addition to the text that I was reading. I like Cait Nary’s writing style and I cannot wait for the next book. The fact that this book was the author’s debut? I wouldn’t have guessed 🙂