Reading, Watching, Writing: Winter Sports Edition!

Reader Newsletter, February

Hi, friends! Here’s a Reading/Watching/Writing: Winter Sports Edition.

Here’s what’s coming in this issue:
• Heated Rivalry!
• Winter Olympics!
• I’m writing sports romance again!
• And some leftovers!

So let’s just get this out of the way: I’ve watched Heated Rivalry all the way through three times and I’ve now also read all six of the books in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, on which HR is based. I have a few thoughts!

I won’t drone on too much. Reid’s series is good. One of the things I really appreciate about it is the way she layers the books on top of each other. Each book focuses on a different couple (mostly), but the events overlap and the characters pop up in each other’s books, and it really feels like an alternate universe NHL. The books are on the cozy end of the conflict spectrum (especially Common Goal, in which the conflict is just that Scott Hunter’s teammate Eric Bennett thinks he’s too old for Kyle the Bartender, and Kyle disagrees) (thank you, Kyle). The books are quick, easy reads, for the most part, so I was able to read books 2-6 in 2 weeks. (That’s fast for me.) Thus I think it’s worth it to read the whole series and not just the Shane/Ilya books, because the other books provide a lot of context, and also Ilya pops up in every book to cause chaos, and I love that for him. 

The show was a different experience, because on my first viewing, I didn’t get hooked until episode 3. I had no context going in, I just knew it was a show about gay hockey players based on a romance series, and the first two episodes felt like mostly table setting and sex scenes. On subsequent viewings, I’ve changed my mind about that; there’s a lot happening in the first two episodes that pays off later. (But now I feel like an idiot for telling my friends I didn’t really get it after I watched episode 2. I was very, very wrong!) And, look, episode 3 mostly got me because François Arnaud is a dish and I am shallow that way sometimes. But the show, taken as a whole, is really good, I think primarily because it leans into its romance novel roots. Episodes 4–6 especially are about emotions more than sex.

But if you’ve got six hours, you can put that directly into your eyeballs and probably have. I don’t have much to say about the show that hasn’t been written about elsewhere. I did have a few thoughts on the books. So, here they are quickly: 

Game Changer: (Scott/Kip) I listened to this in audio over the holidays, which I kind of regret. The narrator is fine for the most part, but he does a “Brooklyn accent” for Kip that is (I’m so sorry!) very, very bad. (I’ve lived in Brooklyn for 20 years, so I can speak on this with some authority.) In the show, the actor who plays Kip has a Canadian accent. Justice for Kip’s Brooklyn roots! I think Game Changer might be one of the weaker books in the series. Reid normally does an excellent job using sex scenes to develop character and advance the plot—romance authors should study this!—but a lot of the sex scenes in this book feel gratuitous. The show does a solid job adapting it, although it cuts out the last third or so of the book, so we miss out on a) Kip’s dad working out that Kip is dating Scott without Kip telling him anything; and b) Scott’s Grand Romantic Gesture, which involves showing up at Kip’s parents’ house in Bay Ridge. (Also, in the book, Kip’s mother exists. I suspect the show, which was made for like $12, ran out of money to hire more actresses, although I like the dynamic between Kip and his dad in the show a lot.)

Heated Rivalry: (Shane/Ilya) I mean, the show nailed it. I switched to ebooks for this one and read this book in one sitting on a train ride from New York to Boston. I regret nothing.

Tough Guy: (Ryan/Fabian) In my third viewing of the show, I finally clocked Ilya talking about Ryan Price in the tuna melt scene. I hope this means we get Ryan Price in Season 2. I worry this might be the most expendable plot because Ryan doesn’t play on a team with any of the show’s major characters, but this book is tooth-achingly sweet. (I also enjoy the runner in the series in which Ryan keeps walking in on Shane and Ilya and is mildly traumatized every time.) 

Common Goal: (Eric/Kyle) As mentioned, this book doesn’t have much conflict, but it has a lot of Scott/Kip. Unfortunately, Scott and Kip are a little one note when they pop up in the series again. They’re happy and in love and kind of boring, to be honest. Although I do enjoy that Ilya continues to antagonize Scott, and Scott is extremely annoyed by it.

Role Model: (Troy/Harris) If I had to guess, we’ll get a lot of stuff from this book in Season 2 because the events of it overlap so much with The Long Game, which show runner Jacob Tierney has already confirmed is the base for the next season. I’d like to see Troy as a fleshed-out character and his friendship with Ilya as part of the show. Also all the dogs.

The Long Game: (Shane/Ilya) This book is pretty schmoopy. A lot of it is from Ilya’s POV as he’s going through it emotionally. I don’t want to spoil anything, and I liked the book, but it’s also a little fan service-y and the ending is ridiculously happy. 

I also kind of skimmed the hockey scenes. I don’t know much about hockey. I probably should be more of a hockey fan; I attended a big New England university where hockey was a Big Deal (my alma mater won the NCAA championships a few years ago). And I like sports! But I don’t follow hockey. Do I know what a power play is? I do not. I don’t really care.

But this is my awkward transition into the Winter Olympics coming up starting February 6, and I am, as always, stoked. I’ve been following figure skating in the non-Olympic years, and I think the Americans can win gold in every discipline that isn’t pairs. But I love watching all the winter sports, and I could use a programming distraction from… everything happening in the world right now.

If you want to keep up with my thoughts on the Olympics, I’m at @katemcmurraygram on Threads!

When I initially pitched my Elite Athletes series, I wrote a proposal for six books: 3 summer, 3 winter. The publisher only contracted the first 3 summer books, but I’ve had ideas for the other three rattling around in my head for a few years. I have since cannibalized my initial proposal, and written two very different books that I’m trying to decide how to publish.

Oh, awkward transition again: I wrote a novel last year about a skier who is recovering from a terrible injury and falls in love during her comeback year. I’m not satisfied with it yet, so I intend to make some more revisions before I send it out on sub (or self-publish, we’ll see). And then in December, in like 3 weeks, I wrote the first draft of a romance between two figure skaters. It needs some work (I never wrote the ending, I should probably do that) but a first draft exists!

And I may not know much about hockey, but I do know about baseball, so I’ve started writing a new trilogy set in the same universe as Out in the Field. (This was my 2012—reissued in 2016—novel about two closeted baseball players.) I liked Rachel Reid’s approach to overlapping plots and characters, so that’s basically what I’m doing. (To the fans: in the new series, Matt Blanco is in his fifties, and married to Iggy Rodriguez, who just retired, and he’s now the manager of the Brooklyn Eagles, but the trilogy is about the younger guys who play in the AU MLB.)

So hopefully this means a lot of sports romance will be coming from me in the near future.

Some leftovers: 

Other things I’ve read recently: I’m reading some other sports romances. I’m currently reading an Emily Rath MMF hockey romance that has a lot of fun banter and zippy dialogue, but I find the plot… implausible. Your mileage may vary depending on how much that matters to you. I also recently read ZomRomCom by Olivia Dade, which I thought was really fun.

Next up: In addition to the Game Changers books, I spent my holiday gift cards on Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer, which is a romantasy I’m really looking forward to.

Other things I‘ve watched: A bunch of my shows came back in January!

We’ve got new RuPaul’s Drag Race! I’m always happy for new seasons, but the show feels, I don’t know, a little lazy and detached lately? Like they’re just rehashing the same bits? Someone needs to shake up this franchise, because I still love it, but it’s a little tired. (Drag Race is like 40% of the reason I still have cable, since it only airs on MTV. Make it worth it!)

We’ve got new Traitors (US), a show I should not like but love to an irrational degree. I’m not the biggest reality TV guy, but I love watching these big personalities try to outwit each other. (I binged Celebrity Traitors UK over the holidays, and it’s also really great. I only knew about a third of the celebrities, but that’s true of the US version, too, because I don’t watch Survivor or the Housewives, which seem to be two big pots the US producers cast from. One fun thing about the UK celebrities is that a) most of them knew each other because the UK is not that big, and b) most of them were very smart, which turned out to be a liability, especially for Stephen Fry. That whole season was very entertaining, so don’t sleep on it if you’re a Traitors fan.) 

We’ve got new The Pitt, a show I think is absolutely brilliant and also very gross, so I have to watch like half of it through a blanket. 

New Bridgerton just dropped but I haven’t had time yet! This is Benedict’s season, as I understand it. Bisexual men are really having a pop culture moment.

I also watched the movie People We Meet on Vacation, based on Emily Henry’s novel by the same name, a book I really liked. The movie lacks some of the charm of the book, and I had some niggles about changes the movie made to the story, but I liked it. Emily Bader and Tom Blyth have very good chemistry. (I didn’t realize when the casting announcement was made that Bader was also the lead in My Lady Jane, a show I loved that Amazon unjustly canceled after one season. She’s great. Put her in more things, Hollywood.)

Other Writing: I do not yet have a pub date for the third book in the Regency series, but my publisher has it and I anticipate getting first edits back soon. I pitched it as a friends-to-lovers, but it ended up being idiots-to-lovers—these two dummies don’t realize they’re in love with each other until it’s almost too late, and it was a ton of fun to write. Updates on that pub date when I have it. But books 1 and 2 (I Never Forget a Duke and Everything but the Earl) are out now so you can catch up!