Reviewed by Valerie
TITLE: The End Zone
SERIES: Atlantic Lightning #2
AUTHOR: Riley Hart
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 306 pages
RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2021
BLURB:
Jeremy
Seeing my best friend West, happy with his fiancé opened my eyes to things I’ve been missing in my own marriage. My divorce, which was amicable, followed. Strangely, at West’s wedding, I find myself confiding in Darren, the straight, confirmed bachelor and star quarterback of the Atlanta Lightning. Darren is a full-steam-ahead kind of guy, and one talk leads to hanging out, swapping phone numbers, and pranking West and Anson while they’re on their honeymoon. When I head back to California, I expect our chats to end, but I couldn’t be more wrong.
Darren
I still can’t say how it happened, how a random decision to strike up a conversation with Jeremy turned into…whatever this is. All I know is, months later, my days aren’t complete until we tell each other good night. Whether it’s on our calls or when he flies to Atlanta, we talk about everything, lying awake together half the night. Jeremy’s got me feeling…different. If it was just my newly discovered bisexuality, that’d be one thing. I’m not one to stress about being into a man for the first time. It’s the other stuff, the way he makes my pulse race and my heart swell, that’s throwing me for a loop.
I didn’t think I was made for relationships, thought something inside me was broken, but I want it all with him. Except, it feels like as soon as we make it past one obstacle, there’s an even bigger one waiting for us. We just have to keep our heads in the game and our eyes on the prize, to make it to the end zone, before one last tackle takes us down for good.
REVIEW:
The End Zone is Riley Hart’s follow up to the wildly successful The Endgame in her Atlanta Lightning sports romance series. It features one of my favorite tropes, a bisexual awakening. The stars this time around are Darren and Jeremy, who were introduced previously as the best friends of Anson and West, respectively. This book picks up a few years after Anson and West became a couple. Although they have met numerous times before, it’s not until at their friends’ wedding that Darren and Jeremy embark on a closer friendship – a long distance relationship maintained through texts and phone calls (and some outrageously hot phone sex), much like with Anson and West.
Darren is the way too cocky, straight quarterback for Atlanta’s professional football team, and one of the top players in the NFL. He loves his family fiercely and is widely admired and respected in his sport. He relishes the attention and adulation his career brings, but his life is starting to feel empty. Darren questions what his passion is if not football, and challenges Jeremy with the same question.
Jeremy is still a lawyer in San Francisco but is now amicably divorced from his husband. He realizes that no, law is not satisfying enough for him; he’s much more energized by his work with the queer alliance center he founded with West in Atlanta. Furthermore, after observing the joy and love between his best friend and his husband, Jeremy feels his life is incomplete.
Through their texts and calls, the men build a friendship on companionship and making each other laugh. There is incessant flirting, innuendo, sarcastic banter, and sex jokes. But it has a dude bro vibe I didn’t care for. “I know you are but what am I” is uttered more than once; it reads too immature for men who are thirty and forty. Their antics and conversations seem more appropriate for twelve-year-old boys. More than anything, though, Darren’s excessive cockiness grated on my nerves.
To the book’s credit, the secondary characters – headlined by Darren’s sister/agent, Mia – are well-developed additions to the story. Mia is awesome; I wish every LGBTQ+ person had a Mia in their life, with her undying, unconditional love, support, and practical advice. Kudos to the sexy times, too – this is one steamy book. The story is at its strongest during the more serious moments when Darren questions his sexuality and when the men acknowledge the depth of their feelings for each other. I was delighted to see a demi-romantic main character; sadly, it’s an identity not often found in the genre, but the representation here is on-point. The epilogue is sweet, as well.
But The End Zone employs a very similar plotline as its predecessor and I would’ve enjoyed more originality with this story. I’m a longtime fan of Ms. Hart, so while The Endgame is my favorite book of hers, The End Zone fell short for me. Even though it failed to hold my interest as much as I would’ve liked, it was easy to recognize her hallmark style and the quality writing that characterizes all of her work. After taking a peek at ratings elsewhere, I’ve concluded that most readers loved this book more than I did, so chances are you will, too.
RATING: 
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