Reviewed by Larissa

 

TITLE: The Rest of the Story

AUTHOR: Tal Bauer

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 419 pages

RELEASE DATE: January 8, 2023

BLURB: 

Let me earn it.

I keep things simple. I’m a classic one-night wonder. Relationships? Are you out of your mind? No. No way. Not interested. My heart is vulcanized rubber, puck hard, and that’s the way I like it.

Then I’m traded to the absolute worst team in the NHL, the Rocky Mountain Outlaws, and I’m hit with a one-two punch.

First: I’m asked to step up and lead the team, which is every kind of bad idea you can imagine. I’m a head-down, mind-my-business kind of guy. Mr. Uninvolved, Mr. No, Not Me, Mr. Find Someone Else. But these players have been through a mess of hell, and someone thinks I can help pull them together.

The Outlaws are made up of jaded veterans and wide-eyed rookies, and we have no business whatsoever succeeding. We are scrappy and plucky and built out of spit and duct-tape… and whatever we’re doing, it’s working.

Second: The first day I’m in Boulder, I go over the boards and come face-to-face with a pair of blue eyes and lose my heart. Boy, howdy: meet my new co-captain, Shea Darling.

He’s way, way off-limits. It’s a stratospherically terrible idea to want or crave him. This crush, this infatuation, is going nowhere fast.

Yeah, right. I’m gone for Shea. I’m head over heels, and I’m all tangled up in something I can’t understand or control. This isn’t me. I don’t fall in love. And there’s nothing simple about Shea, or about the Outlaws. This team is finally putting up the wins, and we are making something of ourselves. Falling for my co-captain while we’re on a Cinderella run could jeopardize everything we’re striving for.

But then there’s this one night.

And this one kiss.

And everything changes.

Eighty-two games in a season.

Twenty men hungry for redemption.

One co-captain who could be my forever.

This is the rest of the story.

*****

The Rest of the Story is a friends-to-lovers, hockey players/teammates MM romance, and includes themes of survivorship.

The Rest of the Story is set in the same universe as Gravity, but each novel can be read independently. You do not need to read Gravity first to enjoy The Rest of the Story.

REVIEW: 

Tal Bauer’s The Rest of the Story is pure wish-fulfillment wrapped in a nightmare. Bauer has crafted a MM hockey-themed, underdog, sports romance intended to have the protagonists, jaded veteran player Morgan Elsher and wide-eyed rookie Shea Darling, ride off into the sunset together, happily bringing their team along with them to the land of peace and joy. So expectedly, Bauer provides the reassuring, can’t-help-but-smile-over-it HEA we long for, while summarily dismissing the abject horror that establishes the story’s premise and lies in wait throughout, imperiling the hard-won happiness that Bauer protractedly, painstakingly establishes.

Bauer sits atop many readers’ lists of favorite authors (mine included) because he knows how to tell a story – a story that will pull you in, keep you there, and then linger long after you’ve reached the end. His stories vary, ranging from political thrillers like Secret Service which easily landed on my Best of 2022 list, to family dramas and sports romances full of forbidden love.  The common denominator is Bauer’s intense style.  He doesn’t do things in half measures; the motto “Go Big or Go Home” aptly applies. Bauer’s prose is laden with metaphors and similes, explicit thematic statements, and verbose internal monologues.  He does the deep thinking for his readers so we can sit back and bask in the emotions he conjures. 

When I reflect on Bauer’s stories, it all feels a bit … much. That’s not a bad thing, but rather a deliberate choice – artistic license, as it were.  The Rest of the Story fails to completely jettison the hearts and flowers viewpoint of Bauer’s Gravity, which exists in the same fictional universe but has no connection to The Rest of the Story other than a handful of conversations with Montreal’s NHL superstar Bryce Michel, the star of Gravity.  Romanticism is still very much present, and while tempered in comparison, the narrative drips with poetic sentiment and gushing dedications of mind, heart, and soul. 

Notwithstanding, Morgan and Shea’s quasi-Victorian style romance is gorgeous – the epitome of romance. It’s love at first sight with swoony declarations, crimson blushes, hands covering faces, fluttering eyelashes, and Herculean restraint to accommodate a traditionalist view of sex as meaningful, something worth waiting for, intended only to be shared with “the one” because it’s something special. 

Morgan is our single point of view on the story – an unusual choice that I initially questioned but ultimately embraced because it best serves the survival and redemption story arc.  For Morgan, whose puck-hardened heart doesn’t feel deserving of Shea’s altruistic, perfect soul, his oft-repeated “I’m not worthy” proclamations become overwrought. He struggles to embrace his rightful role as a leader, as Shea’s one and only, and as a lifesaver for the Outlaws and its players. Bauer proves Morgan out to be all of these things, and Morgan’s single POV allows us to see him reach that conclusion organically. 

Bauer couples Morgan’s personal journey with the overarching Bad News Bears/Major League-type underdog team redemption journey. This endearing group of plucky survivors was beaten down but never broken. For some, though, like the mesmerizing, flame-haired, spitfire Brody, it’s a near thing, and Bauer pulls hard on the heartstrings so we don’t miss it or forget it.

The found family team dynamics aren’t window dressing filling out the rest of the story, but rather are the best part of the story. The Outlaws held themselves together through common misery and fear, until Morgan. Morgan showed up for them as a team and individually, day in and day out, and helped them heal. The rest of the story is about how Morgan finally shows up for himself.  

This unadulterated story of love, trust, vanquishing foes, and surviving through horrors squarely hits its mark in the hearts of its readers.  The Rest of the Story is one we will be eager to revisit and are not likely to forget.

RATING: 

BUY LINK: 

Amazon