Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: The Jock

AUTHOR: Tal Bauer

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 400 pages

RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2021

BLURB: 

Wes Van de Hoek clawed his way off his family’s West Texas ranch under the Friday night lights, earning a football scholarship to the state’s best university. Three years in, he has it all: he’s the starting tight end, team captain, and, according to ESPN, maybe the best college football player in the nation. But he’s been keeping a secret from everyone.

Justin Swanscott has three certainties in his life: he’s gay, football is overrated, and he really, really doesn’t like cowboys. He should never have fallen into Wes’s open-range eyes or let his heart run wild when Wes gave him that shy little smile over summer. But he couldn’t stop himself.

Everyone’s asking questions about Wes this season: How is he playing so well? Will Texas be undefeated this year? Will he take the team all the way to the national championship? What’s next for him?

The truth? Wes isn’t dreaming about an NFL contract. His heart belongs to Justin, even though the world wants it to belong to football.

Wes has stadiums packed with screaming fans, ESPN is all over him, and the NFL wants him badly. He’s living under a microscope, and the pressure keeps building as the team keeps winning. Everyone wants something from him, but all Wes wants is to love Justin.

Something’s gotta give.

REVIEW: 

“‘Is there any epic love story that isn’t tragic?’ ‘Ours.’ Wes smiled.
‘It’s not gonna be tragic. It’s gonna be epic.’”

The romance genre has one defining characteristic:  there is always a HEA (or at least a HFN).  In Tal Bauer’s astonishing, heartbreaking, redemptive book, The Jock, he spins out a complicated, messy but beautiful romance with two authentic men at its heart. It’s the epic, soaring love story of Wes Van der Hoek and Justin Swanscott, with a very solid HEA.  But while it’s not a tragedy, that doesn’t mean that tragic things don’t happen along the way.   

Mr. Bauer takes us on a journey that is at times difficult and devastating, but also reassuring and rewarding.  He dismantles, with scalpel-like precision, the hearts and souls of his characters – and his readers.  But never fear, he puts everyone back together at the end.  It’s a romance after all.  But the journey?  It’s breathtaking.

Justin is out and proud.  He’s a dancer, an artist, an aspiring nurse – a career choice reflective of his altruistic heart.  He’s fiercely independent, utterly true to himself and … free. Texas cowboys don’t treat him too kindly though, so Wes’ arrival as his roommate for a 3-week summer study course in France dashes hopes of escaping and maybe finding love.  Until he does, ironically with Wes, the apparent quintessential Texas cowboy.  The irony of a Texan coming to Paris to fall in love with a Texas cowboy is not lost on Justin.

Wes is that Texas cowboy, beautiful and “aw shucks” reticent, unfailingly polite, and passionately self-sacrificing.  He is still waters that run so very, very deep.  Oceans of feelings, dreams and tender hopes live inside him, never to see the light of day.  Wes learned young and had it reinforced often that he needed to keep his head down, his eyes on the ball and his mouth shut. Through stubborn determination, Wes earned a full college football scholarship and found his way out of his suffocating, dead-end West Texas small town. He’s prodigiously talented, one of the top college football players in the US with a path to the NFL practically laid out before him like the yellow brick road.  All he’s got to do is stay the course, stay on the path that will bring him to the glory he’s earned.  

Wes’ identity is the casualty of his choices. There are zero “out” football players at his level. Revealing who he really is would destroy everything he’s worked so hard for. He’d end up with a one-way ticket back to West Texas never to leave again. Plus, he’s carrying the weight of all of the hopes and dreams of his teammates, his brothers in all but blood, on his shoulders. So he hides. 

But it’s fine, he tells himself. He’s used to denying who he is. It’s a necessary means to an end, and it won’t be forever, right? No matter that his greatest heart’s desire is to love a man and be loved in return.  He wants that like the air he breathes, even more than football.  And glory? … Well he’s never wanted that at all.  But what he wants is moot because he’s made his choice.  He’s not falling in love. That is, until he does.

The Jock is an exploration of how love can be the key to finding yourself and who you were meant to be.  Wes just wants to be himself, to be real.  Justin makes him feel real.  It’s his love for Justin, that makes him realize who he is and what he wants.  Justin makes him whole.  It puts the real Wes, the Wes who loves Justin, within reach.  

 “What price are you willing to pay for your love?”

What do you do when your impossible dream becomes a reality, but your reality has no room for your impossible dream come true?  Wes tries to reconcile what he never thought was possible with everything he planned and committed to. It seems there’s no room on his shoulders for his own hopes and dreams, though, so he keeps things separate. It’s the only way he can make all the parts of his new reality, of himself, fit.  

“Wes was power and strength wrapped in a human body.  His bones were his conviction, and his muscles were his promises, and his soul was made out of his dreams.” 

Trying to be everything to everyone, trying to keep the parts of himself separate so he can keep everything else together, is shredding his soul, rending his dreams. Mr. Bauer employs stunning metaphors to convey the crippling burden Wes carries and the depth of his internal conflict. The effective thematic utilization of Swan Lake is the primary one and it was so unexpected, so seemingly out of place in a “sports romance”, that it has an even greater impact on the reader. (Mr. Bauer even includes clever nuances to bolster his message: for example, Justin Swanscott is the white swan.)

The Jock has all the things you’d typically want in a romance. There’s a passionate, swoon-worthy love affair on display.  A dynamic, gripping storyline with angst (oh, there’s angst), exceptional world-building, and vivid scenes that are so very realistic and in many cases, sadly plausible. There are steamy, sexy scenes too, but they are meaningful, not gratuitous. 

But The Jock’s crowning glory is in its expertly created, magnetic characters who we relate to, understand, and emotionally connect with. The emotional connection between the characters – Wes and Justin, Wes and Colton, Justin and his father, Wes and his team – is a live, pulsing heartbeat that sounds from every page of this book.  The reader’s emotional connection with the characters, particularly Wes and Justin, is unavoidable, inevitable and soul deep.  

This is an exceptionally written story, so very unique in its take on what is a fairly common trope.  I’ve already said too much, and yet not enough to do this book justice. The Jock is absolutely one of the best books I’ve read all year, maybe ever.  I was admittedly late to the party in reading this highly acclaimed book.  But in my opinion, what’s important is not when you read The Jock. It’s that you read it.  

RATING:

BUY LINK: 

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