Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Two Man Advantage
SERIES: Point Shot
AUTHOR: V.L. Locey
NARRATOR: Sean Crisden
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 3 hours
RELEASE DATE: December 15, 2009
BLURB:
Victor Kalinski, all-star forward for the Boston Barracudas, is one of the biggest jerks in professional hockey. Before long his aggressive attitude gets him shipped off to play in the minor leagues.
Furious, he takes to the ice with equal amounts of skill and scathing sarcasm, which doesn’t win him any friends—except for good-natured alternate captain Daniel Arou. He won’t take any of Vic’s crap, and he won’t take no for an answer.
But Vic’s troublemaking is pulling his career one way while Dan’s talent is pushing his in the other. However much they scorch the sheets, they might soon be separated by more than Vic’s fear of being hurt.
Inside Scoop: This book contains scorching gay sex and a heaping helping of no-holds-barred snark between hot hockey heroes who don’t pull their punches.
REVIEW:
I’m a bit on the fence with this one. It was written a decade ago and I was sort of shocked by the casual misogyny of the hockey players and coaches. Maybe I shouldn’t be. I’ve been mostly lucky in my life to be surrounded by at least civil folks – even if they weren’t all exactly feminists at heart. The insults soooo many times surrounding the locker room, the coaching staff and the trash talking on the ice were about wives, mothers, girlfriends, or were homophobic. I have to say that got to me a bit. I didn’t have brothers and my father wouldn’t have dreamed of speaking that way. I imagine if he’d tried it, he might have woken up like John Wayne Bobbitt one morning. I have long dealt with what I call “the casual misogyny portion of the evening” when I’m out with my overwhelmingly male colleagues when I’m at clients. You know – the part where they start complaining about their wives and daughters and about how much money they spend on things and the gifts they should buy them for birthdays or anniversaries or what not – like purses or jewelry and how ridiculous it is. It’s not even so much what they say. It’s the tone. It’s largely belittling, condescending and dismissive. And don’t get me wrong – these are mostly very nice men. They just do not hear how they sound to other women. UGH! So this constant barrage of insults and remarks and the toxic masculinity were a bit much.
On the other hand, I did really love Danny and I kept hoping Victor would pull his head out of his ass and “straighten up and flight right” so to speak. He’s got a LOT of issues and he’s not really working that hard to overcome them. But Danny won’t let up. He keeps pushing him and forcing him to face both Danny and himself. He doesn’t think before he speaks. He’s a hothead on and off the ice. He does manage to behave himself when he meets Danny’s family which was quite shocking. Just when we think things might be going OK, Danny’s ship comes in. So of course Victor has to revert to his usually jerky persona. And then he does something really stupid that some readers might find unforgivable. It sort of ranks right up there with Ross and his “we were on a break” type behavior. But then the unthinkable happens and he has to return home for a goodbye he didn’t really see coming and that he is not at all prepared for. But Danny continues to show what a good guy he is and does the right if unexpected thing.
I’m sorry that the rest of this series isn’t available in audio book because I thought Sean Crisden did a great job narrating. He gave just the right sort of meathead approach to Victor’s character. His portrayal of Danny – both the tough and tender sides of him were spot on. I loved Danny from the get-go. His narration really made this story for me. I would give the story 3 hearts and the performance 4 hearts which is how I landed on the 3.5 hearts. I will go on to read the other two novellas in this series, because I really want to see how things play out with these two and if Victor is going to come to his senses or not 😉
RATING: 
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