Scoring Position, Hockey Ever After #2 by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James

Sweet hockey couple have to work to be together. Ryan wants to help Nico get his mental game into gear, but they can't be forced to be friends. However, becoming roommates and then friends is the beginning of some great hockey and maybe a great love.

From the blurb for Scoring Position:

Ryan Wright’s new hockey team is a dumpster fire. He expects to lose games—not his heart.

Ryan’s laid-back attitude should be an advantage in Indianapolis. Even if he doesn’t accomplish much on the ice, he can help his burned-out teammates off it. And no one needs a friend—or a hug—more than Nico Kirschbaum, the team’s struggling would-be superstar.

Nico doesn’t appreciate that management traded for another openly gay player and told them to make friends. Maybe he doesn’t know what his problem is, but he’ll solve it with hard work, not by bonding with the class clown.

It’s obvious to Ryan that Nico’s lonely, gifted, and cracking under pressure. No amount of physical practice will fix his mental game. But convincing Nico to let Ryan help means getting closer than is wise for Ryan’s heart—especially once he unearths Nico’s sense of humor.

Will Nico and Ryan risk making a pass, or will they keep missing 100 percent of the shots they don’t take?

SNik's Review:

Second in series (Hockey Ever After), but can be read as a standalone. Slow burn. Dual POV. 

Professional hockey player Ryan expects trades to happen, but not when he is asked to be the babysitter and performance booster for the young underperforming star of his new team. 

Nico can play hockey, but he needs to up his mental game and the team forcing a friendship with the new mediocre hockey player who also happens to be gay is not helping. 

However, time and hockey allow a friendship to grow and finally Nico and Ryan give in to their attraction, they fall into being a comfortable and swoony couple. Of course the hidden relationship with the clock ticking on the possibility of them being separated by trades at the end of the season, plus the strain of hockey causes all sorts of problems, but we get to cheer them on as they commit to a future together. 

Both Nico and Ryan are likable, the supporting cast interesting, the hockey fun, and yearning beautiful.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Heather's Review:

I really enjoyed getting to know Ryan and Nico and watching the the love, the yearning and the angst from their burgeoning secret relationship.  This is a hockey forward romance, but it suits the characters and watching the non-relationship drama impact their reiationship was really interesting.

Rating: 4 Stars

Scoring Position is available to buy as an ebook, paperback, or to read with Kindle Unlimited subscription.