Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Back to Center
SERIES: Mohegan U Hockey
AUTHOR: Ryan Taylor and Joshua Harwood
PUBLISHER: Wainscott Press
LENGTH: 287 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 1, 2023
BLURB:
Eckie
There are ways to get ahead in college hockey, but having a meltdown, trying to get rid of your coach, and stalking his boyfriend isn’t one of them. Is it really a surprise that I wound up in a hospital facing my demons instead of getting ready to play for the pros and taking care of my baby? I needed the world’s biggest redo, but the probability of a second chance was about the same as…
Jack Rogan walking through the door. But there he was! Jack was one of my coaches, and I was pretty sure he was straight. His easy laugh and sympathetic ear put a smile on my face. He made me believe I could turn my life around. But as much as I liked him, I knew I had to put my fantasies aside. With obligations to meet and amends to make, I didn’t have time to obsess about a guy who was out of my reach.
So why did I say yes when he offered me a place to stay while I got on my feet?
Jack
I was done with relationships. A fractured heart had made sure my walls were high, and my shields were strong. There wasn’t a man I couldn’t resist—until Eckie.
After driving everyone away in an avalanche of self-destruction, he was getting much needed help, and I wondered if I should go see him. A single visit turned into the best part of every day, and I was hooked. When I was with Eckie, the world made sense again. There were only two years separating us, but since I was one of his coaches, spending time together was dangerous. If we kept it up, who knew what I might do?
Maybe something brilliant, like asking him to stay with me when he left the hospital. I knew it was risky, and I told myself I was only being a friend. But the truth was, I liked feeling things again.
Eckie was seeking redemption; Jack was trying to do the right thing. Neither planned on anything beyond friendship. Will following their hearts leave them worse than before, or will they find what they’ve needed all along?
Back to Center is a story of redemption and the unexpected love a man finds in a friend he never knew he’d have. It also includes exciting hockey, a coach/player dynamic, great communication, unquenchable longing giving way to irrepressible heat, an adorable baby, and a perfect HEA.
Content warnings for depression and physical/emotional abuse by parents. The abuse happened in the past, but knowing about it may be difficult for some.
REVIEW:
Ryan Taylor and Joshua Harwood know how to tell a story, and sports romances, specifically hockey romances, are squarely in their wheelhouse. Their strengths lie in the intricate, vivid, extensive world-building and skillfully drawn characters that they pull through their extensive interconnected library of books. I love the fictional hockey world Harwood and Taylor have created and have greedily consumed all of the interconnected books. I love how they adeptly and thoughtfully cross-reference between characters and events in the different stories.
Back to Center picks up where Cracks in the Ice, the first book in this Mohegan U Hockey series left off, and relies heavily on the events that transpired between Eckie and Benny and Cole, the couple featured in that book. While I am generally of the view that Harwood and Taylor lay enough groundwork in each of their stories such that they can stand on their own, as we get deeper and deeper into this extensive fictional hockey universe that spans the entire Bethesda Barracudas series that precedes it, it becomes harder to really engage with the plot and, to some extent, the characters without the benefit of the earlier stories. I highly recommend you at least read Cracks in the Ice before embarking on Back to Center. In fact, when Back to Center starts, it feels like you are in the middle of a story. I actually flipped back to make sure I hadn’t missed a prologue. So if you haven’t read the first book, you may feel lost.
Back to Center is the redemption story of Eckie, who is cast as the bad guy in the first book. While he’s not really a bad guy even there, he makes a lot of hurtful, misguided decisions that end up deeply hurting Benny and, more specifically, Cole. So if you enjoy stories where the character you love to hate is given a chance to become the character you love, you will love Back to Center because that’s exactly the turn things take for Eckie.
Jack unexpectedly forms a friendship with Eckie even when everyone else has turned away. Jack is one of the assistant coaches, just a few years older than Eckie. He is undeniably attracted to Eckie, but tries to keep it under wraps. That doesn’t last long, though – not with the strong pull toward each other. Their improbable friends-to-lovers romance is not an easy one for them to navigate, and they battle back challenges to their relationship as well as to Eckie’s comeback as a hockey player. But this all provides the framework for the best part of this story – the found family of the hockey team and how they rally around Eckie and Jack.
While Back to Center isn’t my favorite of Harwood and Taylor’s hockey romances, if you have the context from the other stories, you’ll fall into this story easily and find yourself rooting for Jack and Eckie as I did. Recommended.
RATING: 
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