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Tough Guy is book three in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, set in the world of professional hockey. While I wasn’t as utterly caught up in the romance here as I was in the previous book (Heated Rivalry – which made my Best of 2019 list), I nonetheless enjoyed the novel, and appreciated the way the author flips the stereotype of the confident, ripped jock so often found in sports romances (both m/f and m/m) and creates instead an endearing, gentle-giant-type character with severe self-esteem issues who struggles to reconcile the person he truly is with the one he’s expected to be on the ice.
At six-feet-seven inches, with a build like a bulldozer, Ryan Price knows how to intimidate. On the ice, he’s an enforcer, someone other players actually aspire to fight with – especially rookies, for whom “paying the Price” is something of a rite of passage. But it’s an image and a job that Ryan wrestles with, and which has been weighing down on him more and more as the years have passed, because that’s not who he is at all. When the story begins, Ryan has just been traded – yet again – this time to the Toronto Guardians, and is being urged – ordered, really – by his coach to be more of a team player both on and off the ice, and unsubtly quizzed about his mental health. Anxiety, self-esteem issues and finding social situations hard to deal with mean Ryan has always found it difficult to connect personally and professionally, and a well-publicised “freak out” the previous season (a panic attack) has made him even more self-conscious. This is the ninth team Ryan has played for in almost as many years; he’s never played anywhere long enough to put down roots or make any real friends, but this time he’s determined to change that, and finds himself an apartment in the vibrant, LGBTQ part of town. Ryan is openly – albeit quietly – gay but that’s never been an issue, partly, he suspects, because he’s moved too often for anyone to really notice or care, and with a few other players – notably Scott Hunter (Game Changer) – coming out recently, it hasn’t seemed necessary to hide it. Sex hasn’t often been a positive experience for him; he hasn’t had many partners, and those he has had haven’t really been interested in him as a person, or been able to see past his size or their own preconceptions of what he should like and want. He’s lonely, the medication he’s on is screwing up his libido and… it sucks.
When Ryan enters a local pharmacy in order to get a prescription filled, he’s surprised to see Fabian Salah working there. When Ryan was seventeen, he’d been billeted with the Salahs, a Lebanese family who lived and breathed hockey and whose daughter was a rising hockey star, but whose son, a hugely talented musician, seemed hardly to merit their notice. Even then, Ryan thought Fabian was beautiful and had a mad crush on him – which he suppressed, having quickly learned that Fabian despised everything to do with hockey. Over the year Ryan lived with Salahs, Fabian’s attitude changed and they became friends, but they haven’t seen each other since Ryan made the NHL.
Fabian is Ryan’s complete opposite in just about every way. Femme, confident and extrovert, he’s amazingly talented, completely adorable and has zero fucks to give about what others think or say about him. Plus he has the most fabulous group of friends I’ve read about in quite some time. Fabian had quite the crush on Ryan back in the day (but thought he was straight,) and seeing him again brings back a lot of that old fascination and attraction. Fabian isn’t pushy, but he does need to nudge Ryan out of his comfort zone a little to start with, and before long, they’re seeing each other regularly and fast moving toward couple-dom, helped considerably by Fabian’s ability to understand Ryan’s fears and anxieties and treat them as part of him and not something to be ashamed of or weird.
Tough Guy is a very different book to its predecessor, and anyone coming to it expecting more of the same may need to adjust those expectations. It’s what I’d call a ‘quiet’ book in general; the romance evolves naturally and realistically, and the drama is mostly supplied by Ryan’s growing conviction that he’s not happy in his chosen career and his struggles to deal with his self-esteem issues and see himself as someone worthy of someone as vibrant and sexy as Fabian. Ms. Reid handles Ryan’s anxiety issues very sensitively and never over – or under – plays them, and I appreciated her decision to write a main character who is experiencing sexual difficulties and isn’t always raring to go at the drop of a hat, something not often explored in romance novels.
I loved Fabian’s confidence and easy charm, although I was less than impressed with his actions towards the end, which actually felt like a deliberately contrived way of injecting some last minute tension into the story. Fortunately, things are resolved quickly, but that short section felt like an insert rather than an organically evolved part of the story, and I had to knock the final grade down a bit as a result.
Following a book as good – and well-loved – as Heated Rivalry was always going to be tricky, but the author’s decision to do something completely different was a good one. Tough Guy is a sweet, sensual and charming romance, and if you like opposites attract, gentle ginger giants and/or second-chance romances, then I’d urge you to give it a try.
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Grade: B
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 15/01/20
Publication Date: 01/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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I finished this last night. It’s a B for me, too.
Though it’s not such an easy sell–asking readers to stick with a story about a guy plagued with unrelenting depression and self-esteem issues–I admire that Reid goes there anyway. She does a great job developing Ryan’s character. We are shown so many ways in which Ryan is being crushed by his job, both physically and emotionally, it’s a bit of a tough read at times. Thank goodness Fabian comes on the scene! (And yes, it was great having a pro-athlete who isn’t always ready for sex at the drop of a hat.)
I loved that Ryan was turned on by Fabian’s femme personality, digging the makeup, lace panties, and red lipstick. A really femme male protagonist is not something I’ve seen much in my M/M romance reading. (I wondered at one point if Ryan himself might get in touch with his feminine side via experimenting with makeup or such.)
I agree that it would have been nice to see more of an epilogue. Also, I know the guys are attracted to each other physically, but I feel like they could have had a better convo about other things they loved about each other.
Can we assume that Ryan now has a couple million (U.S.) in the bank from his 10 years of pro hockey? So he’s pretty well fixed for a while?
Finally, while I’m trying not to let Reid’s usual SJW messages get in the way of my enjoyment, I could not help rolling my eyes at the comment in the book about parents “aggressively gendering” their little girl because–OMG!–they’ve dressed her in a pink version of the local hockey team’s jersey.
So, here’s the thing, Rachel: Lots and lots of little girls love pink, without Mummy and Daddy’s prodding. No “aggressive gendering” required. My younger sister came out of the womb a “girly girl”, gravitating to the color pink and to Barbie dolls in a way I–a tomboy growing up–could not fathom. My sister would have totally opted for a pink jersey over the team’s official colors in a heartbeat. It’s so sad that Rachel Reid seems to judge everything by how well it aligns with her skewed beliefs regarding social justice issues and gender identity.
Hey, everyone! Rachel Reid just posted an article about her research for “Tough Guy” on the Carina Press blog. Here’s the link if anyone is interested: https://www.carinapress.com/blog/2020/01/a-canadian-reunion-rachel-reid-on-writing-about-toronto/.
Aw, would like to have read the article but it’s from 2020 and has been removed….
Just finished this and enjoyed it very much for all the reasons cited in the review above. I particularly liked Ryan as an MC and wish the book had been a little longer. It would have been interesting to see a little more of his evolution as a character. Certainly not “cured”. But who he might become, flaws and all, doing something far less soul-sucking for a living, with a few friends in his corner, for a change. I can imagine (e.g. getting to know the families, for example) but it would’ve been nice to see on the page.
Also, interesting that you dropped the grade on this book for Fabian’s lapse at the end. I thought Fabian’s lapse was pretty tame compared to a very similar situation at the end of Alexa Martin’s Blitzed. I said in my comment to the Blitzed review (which another reviewer marked as an a “A” read) that I’d have dropped the review out of A territory, for this very reason, to a B+. Now I’m thinking it should have been even more, given that I *really* disliked the way Martin wrote Brynn’s reactions.
I’m afraid I haven’t read Blitzed, so I can’t make the comparison. I do agree about wanting to see Ryan a but further down the road.- maybe we’ll see him again in another book in the series?
Putting this on my TBR pile!
I agree with every single thing you say in this review! Same grade from me!
Shared. Braincell.
Got it queued up next on my kindle. Can’t wait! I think it’s interesting that all three of Reid’s books have been different in tone, even though they’re all m/m hockey romances. GAME CHANGER was really one player’s journey to coming out; HEATED RIVALRY covered a decade in the evolution of a secret relationship; and now TOUGH GUY takes the m/m relationship in yet another direction. I understand Reid first started writing fanfic (GAME CHANGER was apparently a Captain America/Bucky Barnes story)—and she’s quickly become a favorite author for me.
The differences in tone across all three books is something I definitely noticed; it’s not an easy thing to do well. I confess I have yet to read the first book – I had hoped to pick it up in audio, which is my preferred method of playing catch up, but the narrator is someone I don’t like, so it remains on the TBR of doom! I will get to it one day…