Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Nice Catching You
AUTHOR: Ryan Taylor and Joshua Harwood
NARRATOR: Nick J. Russo
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 8 hours and 43 minutes
RELEASE DATE: February 9, 2022
BLURB:
What happens when the number-one college hockey star in the country falls in love – with a man?
Nick Johnson, a top prospect for a pro hockey team, has a secret: He’s gay. Tired of living in the closet for the sport he loves, he sees no way out.
Jacob Meyer’s string of bad boyfriends left him cynical about love. Instead, he focuses on his studies as a third-year law student. With a new job waiting for him, he’s eager to graduate and move on.
On a school-sponsored trip, Nick and Jacob meet in a most unexpected way. When Nick tells Jacob his secret, they decide to hang out, just as friends. But their attraction is too strong to ignore, and they soon begin dating.
Since Nick is a big man on campus, it doesn’t take long for people to notice his attachment to Jacob. All hell breaks loose when the relationship gets out. As the national media descends, university officials try to figure out how to solve their “problem”.
Their efforts divide Nick’s team, inflame fans, and put Nick and Jacob’s futures in jeopardy. Will the men be able to survive a plot to destroy them without derailing both their careers?
Nice Catching You is an out-for-you romance featuring a lot of love, exciting hockey, and a beautiful holiday. There’s also plenty of steam and a very happy ending.
REVIEW:
Ryan Taylor and Joshua Harwood’s Nice Catching You is an older title, published back in October of 2020, and lives in the same universe as some of the more recent titles you may have read, for example, Fire in the Ice and the lovely romance Ice Angels which was released in October 2021. It is the first book in this universe of interconnected standalones, and it is reinvigorated through Nick J. Russo’s vocal performance on the recently released Nice Catching You audiobook.
While the authors do a nice job of making these books accessible on their own or even taken out of order (except The New Next One, which must be read after reading Nice Catching You), my view is that reading them in order enhances the enjoyment of them. The connection between the characters is pretty tight, and the plots refer back to prior characters and events. The greater context makes the stories much more fulfilling.
Each book focuses not just on the romance of the featured couple but how that romance develops within the real-world challenges of coming out or existing as an openly gay man in a competitive, traditionally homophobic sport. The books vary on how those two aspects are balanced. Nice Catching You leans heavily towards the latter. It focuses less on Nick and Jacob falling in love, instead dwelling more on the perils and controversy surrounding Nick’s coming out in order to love Jacob openly. We see how they navigate the hostility, threatened violence, and sinister machinations of the press and the hockey powers that be in light of the revelation about Nick’s sexuality and his relationship with Jacob.
Nice Catching You displays the authors’ solid writing skills. However, having read the later books first, this book clearly is a starting point for the authors’ increasingly refined and matured craft. In their later stories, they are particularly adept at creating multi-dimensional, endearing characters and rooting them in intriguing, plausible situations. However, in this book, that complexity is not as evident.
The structure of Nice Catching You makes more sense if viewed as a Young Adult title. I’m not sure if it was billed as YA or not, but it certainly feels like one (but for the explicit sex scenes) because the story dwells in the shallows rather than plumbing the depths of the characters or any of the substantial issues touched upon across the narrative. The plot lacks the nuance seen in the authors’ later titles, predictably unfurling events and driving the plot forward using “cookie-cutter” characters (e.g., the viciously homophobic teammates, the vindictive ex-boyfriend, the slighted then redeemed former best friend, the enraged coach, etc.)
The story is enjoyable for what it is, and if read with the YA expectation, you won’t be disappointed. Mr. Russo’s narration of the story helps. He’s a very skilled narrator who invests in his vocal performances, as is evident in the Nice Catching You audiobook. He adds the most value by giving dimension to the characters through his vocal intonations and emotional investment. A quicker pace would have been preferable, though. However, that’s easily remedied if you listen to it at a faster playback speed (I used 1.3x speed) because it makes the dialogue, in particular, feel more natural. Increasing the speed also detracts attention from his tendency to add an “l” to the end of his “aw” words (e.g., “drawl” instead of “draw”), which is more noticeable at the slower speed.
Overall, Nice Catching You is better with the audio than without and needs to be read with appropriate expectations. It lays down the foundation for the later, excellent stories in this universe so in that context, it’s worth a listen.
RATING: 
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