Recently in one of my hockey romance book lovers groups (yes there is such a nirvana for fans of hockey & hockey romances) one of the members asked for recs for books with minor league teams. That got me thinking that perhaps it was time to give the men on my AHL and ECHL teams a little exposure. Sure, everyone dreams of the big time, but mostly all hockey players spend time honing their skills in the minor leagues. But just because they’re playing in the minors doesn’t mean their romances aren’t major league!
So, to that end, here’s a list of reads (as of date of post) that are set in the minor leagues:
Point Shot Trilogy
Now, you can have the books that introduced Victor Kalinski to the world in one reasonably priced boxed set! With over 350 Goodreads reviews and ratings combined, the romance of Vic Kalinski and Dan Arou is one that once read, will never be forgotten. In this three-book set, you’ll get to experience all the passion, sarcasm, hockey action, and romance that reviewers have called “Beautifully Written”, “Surprisingly Heartfelt”, and “Hot! Hot! Hot!”
“The writing in this is snappy and awesome, the story moves at a great pace and oh it’s HOT AS EVER-LOVING HELL. There’s romance that never veers into a too-sappy place, it’s FUNNY and full of great lines right and left, and so engaging that I couldn’t stop reading it. The ending is satisfying, with our characters not becoming perfect people but becoming better together than they are apart, and that’s just about as romantic as it gets.” Avon Gale – Author of the Scoring Chances series
More info →Snap Shot
Mario McGarrity has been around the block – and rink – more than a few times.
He’s creeping up on retirement age, has some dings and dents, and says what’s on his mind. Not exactly what most would consider a luxury ride, but his beautiful Lila – the transgender woman who stole his heart – loves him like no other woman ever has despite a little rust here and there.
Everything is good – no, great – aside from the distance issue, until a surprise from Lila’s past crops up and moves in with her. Can Mario be the family man that Lila needs, or is this one game the old vet is unable to skate in?
More info →Open Net
August Miles has the world on a string professionally.
Augie, as his friends and teammates call the unassuming young goaltender, is on the fast track to the pros. The starting goalie for the Cayuga Cougars, he has a year or two in Cayuga to hone his skills and all his career dreams will have come true. Pity his personal life isn’t riding the same high. He’s the only one among his group of friends without that special someone to call his own.
Until he meets Salvatore Castenada at a lakeside party. The attraction is white-hot and more than a little wonderfully overwhelming for the romantically inexperienced goalie. August quickly discovers that Sal is everything he’s dreamed of in a man: mature, settled, sinfully handsome, and filled with gentle humor. Sal is also HIV positive.
Will Sal’s revelation about his status end this budding relationship before it can even begin? Or will the two men be able to handle the challenges life—and a championship run for the Cougars—throws at them?
Coach’s Challenge
Victor Kalinski and his husband, Dan Arou, are living the dream. Married for over a year now, the couple have settled into life in Cayuga surrounded by friends, family, and a team that’s poised to make another championship run. Each man is enjoying professional success as well as personal bliss. Who knew life in the suburbs with a spouse and a child could be so darn satisfying? Not Vic. K, that’s for sure.
The happy times are about to turn rough, though. The Cougars have picked up a new player, Sander March, a brash young center whose sass, skill, and attitude can rival Victor’s. When it’s revealed that this new player and Dan have history, tensions begin to rise between the newlyweds.
As Victor and Dan work on those issues, the one person Victor never thought he would meet arrives in the small New York hamlet and proceeds to flip everything in Vic’s life upside down. Can Victor and Dan’s marriage withstand what life is about to drop on it, or will the challenges be too much for them to handle?
More info →Overtime
Sander March is one season away from the pros, or so everyone tells him.
If only Sander had as much faith in his ability as the Cougar coaching staff does. Outwardly, he’s cocksure, borderline bitter, and slightly sarcastic. All that strut and sass hides a wounded soul though. Working to hide a brutal past filled with humiliation, abuse, and a family member who still haunts him, Sander has never found the kind of comfort and understanding he so desperately needs. Until he meets Mateo Castillo, a minor league baseball player for the nearby Elmira Egrets. Mateo and Sander click instantly, and a budding friendship develops between the two athletes.
Mateo then introduces Sander to his boyfriend, Noah Coombs, an aspiring manga comic creator. The three men find themselves bonding strongly, and that slowly gives way to sexual attraction. Eventually, Mateo and Noah invite Sander into their relationship. The path to happiness isn’t going to be easy for Sander as he faces criticism from his friends, teammates, and the press for his choices. The brash young star can handle all that, it’s when his abuser shows up in Cayuga that Sander fears not only for his own safety, but for the lives of the two men he has grown to love. Will Sander’s past tear him away from Mateo and Noah, or will he be able to leave the darkness behind?
Warning – This story has disturbing subject matter.
More info →One On One
The past few years have been a bit chaotic for Cougars new associate coach, Lancaster Hart. After an amiable divorce he began living his life as the gay man he’d kept closeted for far too long. With the recent move to Cayuga, he’s away from his support system and properly made sweet tea. Despite a roster filled with new friends and associates, he’s spending his nights alone.
As his team gears up to make a run at the Calder Cup, Lancaster discovers that not everything in upstate New York is wine, woodlands, and chilly conservative ideals. At a summer music festival, he first lays eyes on Townsend Harris, folksy/blues singer by night and mayoral office assistant by day. Lancaster is enraptured with the man’s powerful sultry voice. Also, Town just might be the most beautiful man he has seen in all his forty-one years.
The two hit it off at an informal meet and greet after the show, where they spend the night talking and sipping wine. One evening of conversation and an incendiary goodbye kiss leads them into a scorching love affair that might be exactly what Lancaster has been searching for his whole life. Can his team pull off professionally what he’s hoping to do privately as well? Or will capturing their dream evade both the Cougars and Lancaster?
More info →A Star Crossed Christmas (A Cayuga Cougars Novella)
Being the new man in the crease can be tough. Mitch Adams, former back-up for the Cougars is now the main man in goal, replacing August Miles, who was recently called up to the pros. There are lots of new things happening in Mitch’s life and not everything is because of hockey.
Two years ago, he shared an explosive kiss with his childhood friend, Olympic snowboarder, Shaun Sandbeck. Since then, Mitch has been more than a little confused about a multitude of things pertaining to who he is, his sexuality, and the fact that he can’t stop thinking about that kiss and how he wants more.
For Mitch, going home for Christmas is a chance to find his focus and face the man who caused all this confusion. Is it possible for the two men to untangle lust from love, and find a future together that works?
(Previously published in the Hockey Holidays Anthology)
More info →Off The Rack
Fashion designer Morgan Hara portrays his life as being picture-perfect but it’s far from all glam and glitz. He walked in on his last boyfriend with another man, his grandmother is pressuring him to marry, and his new cat is having a personality crisis. While at a coworker’s wedding he sees his ex-boyfriend showing off his engagement ring online. Morgan then gets a little tipsy and a whole lot reckless. While under the influence of too much pink champagne he not only propositions a beautiful man he doesn’t know, he proposes to him. Much to his surprise the lanky hunk says yes. To both questions.
Cricket Wilkes is not at all Morgan’s usual type. He’s too laid-back, too quick to smile, and just too off-the-rack, if you will. But when Cricket innocently shows up in the background of a family chat after the champagne and lust have worked out of their systems, the drunken proposal is soon somehow very real. With the lie now firmly sealed the only thing they can do is play it out, pretend that they like each other, and break it off at some later date. But it fate seems to have different plans…
More info →Rebound
If there’s one thing that’s a certainty in life, it’s change.
It’s taken Victor Kalinski years to settle into the kind of happiness that he thought he’d never find. The small town of Cayuga, New York, has welcomed him warmly. It’s given him a championship team to coach, a tightly-knit group of friends, a father who he has reconciled with, and a safe place to raise the son he adores. The small town has also blessed him with Dan Arou, his husband and his soulmate, and one of the most skilled forwards on the Cougars. Given Dan’s outstanding play in their recent Calder Cup win, it was inevitable that Dan’s time in the minors was about to come to an end.
When Dan is given a starting position in Boston, Victor’s serene life is thrown into complete chaos. Pride over Dan’s accomplishment fills his heart but facing a long, lonely season in Cayuga is causing no small amount of discord. Add in a wedding that will give his son a new stepfather, health issues for his dad, and Victor’s own penchant for saying things that aren’t exactly politically correct, and the impending explosion is guaranteed to blow Vic’s life to bits. Life-altering choices will have to be made. Will Victor rebound from the challenges, or will he be unable to accept the upheavals that life has dealt him?
More info →Final Shot
Sometimes family is the light that leads you through the darkest parts of life.
Living the dream. That’s been Dan Arou-Kalinski’s life for the past ten years. That life hasn’t always been an easy one though. Dan has worked hard to get where he is and has faced some major obstacles on his road to success. It’s not always been a rose garden being married to Victor, but his love for his sometimes thorny husband has no bounds. His career has given him years of great success, memories, and championship rings. Yes, fate has been kind to Dan Arou-Kalinski for quite a long time. Looks like destiny is about to start calling in some markers.
The paybacks come due when a recurring health issue turns into a life or death situation and threatens to take him out of the game he loves permanently. Then there’s Victor’s son Jack, a proud and out nonbinary preteen who is living a daily nightmare in a small southern town. Juggling two major life issues is taking its toll on him, and just when he thinks he’s found the path out of the woods, Dan will face an unexpected and devastating loss that will require all three of the Kalinski men to pull together to help each other through the dark times.
More info →Draw
They say first loves never last. Jackie Blue Kalinski was about to show them—whoever they are—that the word never is not in his vocabulary.
From the time Jack Kalinski was a preschooler he had a good sense of who he was and where he wanted to go in life. His childhood was spent drawing beautiful dresses for pretty people, male and female alike. Growing up with two dads who played hockey wasn’t exactly conducive to late night talks about tulle or tailor’s chalk, but he never let that stop his dreams of becoming a fashion designer or expressing the genderqueer heart that beat in his chest. His family’s love and support helped him through some painful losses that shaped him into the strong, vivacious, and charismatic college student he is today. Life hasn’t been a smooth ride, but Jack has persevered and is about to take the fashion world by storm.
Little does he suspect that his tidy life is about to be scorched by a chance meeting with one of the men playing hockey on the gay team his father coaches. Martin McKittrick not only catches Jack’s eye, but the much older man wins his heart. The passionate affair with the captain of the Marine Unit of the BFD burns red hot until the new couple run into a few snags that might dampen the inferno: Jack’s ascent into the fashion world, Martin’s job and the inherent dangers that come with it, and the fact that the well-kept secret romance has just been exposed to the world in a rather big way.
More info →Black Tie
Falling in love was easy. Saying ‘I do’ is proving to be the tricky part.
Now that he’s lived with the man of his dreams for close to two years, Jackie Blue Kalinski is finally ready to tie the knot. It’s not that he didn’t want to walk down the aisle sooner, but life kept putting obstacles in the way of the nuptials. A big move from Boston to Brooklyn, changing colleges, family being family, and juggling school while working in New York’s fashion district have stifled wedding plans. Add in that Martin seems to be speeding headlong into a midlife crisis, and it’s no wonder it’s taken them this long to get things moving. But now that the final stitches have been made on the wedding outfits, it’s full steam ahead to that happily ever after!
More info →Touch Of A Yellow Sun
It’s been a rough couple of years for Marek Hafer, roaming hockey protagonist and pugilistic expert. Ending up in Berger Lake, Pennsylvania, on a financially unstable minor league team might just be the ending his wretched career deserves. On the other side of thirty, Marek knows his time on skates is dwindling. His goal now is to spend a few quiet years playing for the Berger Lake Badgers, knock a few helmets together as needed, and then call it quits before his salty personality gets him booted out of hockey permanently.
After a bloody encounter his first night on the ice, the Badgers coach suggests that Marek find a way to lower his violent tendencies before he’s sent packing yet again. That decree leads Marek to knock on the door of his next-door neighbor, Shey Pierson, the owner of Sun Touch Yoga Studio. Shey ticks every box Marek has with his soft blue eyes, flowing golden hair, and long limber legs. The only problem is that Shey is yin to Marek’s yang.
Can a man famed for throwing punches find serenity in the arms of a man known for his tranquil ways?
More info →The Good Green Earth
After the Syracuse Stallions clinch the championship, Nathan Zinkan, the renowned wild man of the AHL is arrested for a DUI. Again. When a no-nonsense judge adds a heavy dose of community service to an already stiff sentence, Nathan has to forget a summer of partying and slide on a pair of gardening gloves. His entire future now rides on how well he can behave while helping elderly urban gardeners tend to their tomatoes.
Watching local garden center owner Bran Cavanaugh working without his shirt is a benefit he wasn’t expecting. Pity Bran is also the one in charge of the community garden as well as keeping tabs on Nathan’s hours served. The two men are instantly at odds due to Nathan’s rebellious nature and Bran’s icy demeanor. Yet there’s no denying the attraction that begins to build between the hot-headed athlete and the cool as a cucumber master gardener.
Will their attraction grow into something deeper, or will it wither and die on the vine?
More info →Blue Line Collection #1
Four must read MM erotic hockey romance stories in one reasonably priced collection!
Readers should be over 18 due to mature language and gay sexual situations. The set includes:
Crashing the Crease
Long Change
Shutdown Pair
Heir Apparent
Holly & Hockey Boots
Minor league goalie Adam Seiger is a nice guy. He’s kind, cute, and a little quirky (but show me a goalie who isn’t) and he loves to interact with fans. During a meet and greet after a game Adam meets Cason Reyes, a hard-working young man with stunning amber eyes and a smile as sweet as a candy cane. Desperate to see Cason again, Adam does something more than a little naughty.
To add insult to the egg nog, it appears that one little white lie may end Adam’s chance of having a merry Christmas with a new boyfriend. Will he end up with nothing but a lump of coal in his stocking, instead of the man who owns his heart?
More info →Goaltender’s Penalty
It was supposed to be a fun-filled night at the arena, cheering on the Harrison Hawks, ogling the blond Acadian god/goalie in the crease, and maybe, if he was really lucky, catching an airborne puck with his hands and not his face.
Unfortunately for Daryl Hamilton, his first minor league ice hockey game ends with him catching something with his face, but it’s not a puck. It’s the fist of his dream goalie, Ryan Amirault. But while his nose may not be thankful for the badly timed autograph request, Daryl can’t say that the rest of him isn’t pleased with how things are turning out.
Not only is Ryan turning himself inside out to make things right with Daryl, the spark of attraction between the two men is slowly blazing up into a roaring inferno. The only problem – aside from two black eyes – is that Ryan isn’t out, there’s a viral video of the nose-crunching encounter, and a rather curious sports reporter is snooping around the daycare center where Daryl works. If their new love can survive all that, it will survive anything.
More info →
Amy Casey says
Every book here is a fantastic read! I loved them all! Definitely must reads for any hockey fan or anyone who just loves sports and romance!