Reviewed by Christian
TITLE: Off the Ice 
SERIES: Hat Trick #1
AUTHOR: Avon Gale, Piper Vaughn
NARRATOR: Kirt Graves
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing
LENGTH: 7 hours and 53 minutes
RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2018
BLURB:
Tristan Holt is nothing if not pragmatic. Despite a flourishing career as a defenseman for the Atlanta Venom, Tristan knows he can’t play hockey forever. One day he’ll retire – if an injury doesn’t force him to hang up his skates first. His backup plan? Finishing his business degree. But he doesn’t count on a very inappropriate attraction to his standoffish sociology professor, Sebastian Cruz.
Sebastian is on the bottom rung of the sociology department at Georgia State. He has his sights set on tenure, and he can’t afford to be distracted, especially not by a sexy student with a body straight out of Sebastian’s dreams. No matter how much Tristan tempts him, that’s one line Sebastian won’t cross. At least, not until summer classes end. After that, everything is fair game.
But Sebastian lives loud and proud, and Tristan is terrified of being the first out player in the NHL. Neither of them can afford to risk his heart when they can’t imagine a happily ever after. The problem is, unlike hockey, when it comes to love, there are no rules.
REVIEW:
Sebastian is a teacher at the local college that has a reputation for being a hard-ass with his students. The new semester starts and Seb thinks he knows who Tristan is; a know it all jock. Tristan doesn’t understand why Seb is so hard on him at first. But they figure it out quite quickly. Throughout all of the back and forth quips, they realize they are extremely attracted to each other and Seb realizes that Tristan is bisexual. Seb does not want to jeopardize his career though, and so there is a bit of sexual tension as the semester goes along. After the semester ends, we think all is well, but Seb is out and proud and doesn’t want to be put back in the closet. Tristan does not want to be the first out hockey player in the NHL.
The story itself doesn’t flow very well. I enjoyed parts of it, but it could have been written a lot better. Most of the tropes in this book have been done so many times. Coming out to family, coming out to a team, etc.. I love the premise of this book though. I think it was pretty well done, although I wish there had been some more sexual tension during school. I like the aspect of teacher and student, but the scenes could have been a lot more attractive. Even though the team trope has been done quite a bit, the way Tristan handled things is a bit different than what I have read before, so I give the authors props for that! The sex scenes were written kind of short. There were parts where Seb would talk about being dominant to Tristan in the bedroom (kind of like a teacher and student roleplay) but I didn’t get much of that (there was a little bit) in any of the bedroom scenes and that disappointed me quite a bit.
Kirt Graves did a wonderful job at portraying both Seb and Tristan. Everything flowed very well. Even though the book was kind of choppy, Kirt made it 100% better. I honestly don’t know if I could have finished the book if there were a different narrator. His voice is like butter and he can change personas in an instant. He has a wonderful, sexy voice. I am giving this book 4 hearts just because of him. I think the authors picked the perfect person for the job!
RATING: 
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