It’s love between the pipes in the third instalment of K.C. Carmichael’s ‘On Thin Ice’ series.
Ander Bouchard is fun loving, happy go-lucky, enthusiastic, a veritable Golden Retriever, the bright, bubbly, always-ok Goalie of Buffalo’s Stanley Cup winning team. He is also utterly miserable. Struggling with the increasingly crushing weight of his own loneliness, Ander buys himself a little dog, and commits himself to making a new friend in fellow goaltender Nikolai Ivanov. The Russian is funny, if dry humoured, and little intimidating, but overwhelmingly kind. Ander feels more himself around Nikolai than he ever has before, and soon the Mule’s goaltender is the only person that can get him out of his funk.
Nikolai Ivanov could not have prepared himself for the whirlwind that is the Bouchards. After a career marked by trades and isolation, Nikolai has finally found his place on the St Louis Mules, playing alongside Brandon ‘Baby’ Bouchard, and occasionally basking in the warmth of his family’s overflowing kindness and affection. Ander is an unexpected bright spot, utterly committed to becoming his friend, and a true delight to spend time with, even if he is on a rival team. Dinners, phone calls, text messages, every day they grow closer, and soon Nikolai is left to reckon with a part of himself he has repressed for a long time.
A funny, flirty friends-to-lovers story, complete with both an acceptance of one’s own sexuality, and a gay? bi? pan?- awakening, Goalie Interference is just as strong as The Kennedy Rule, and, in my opinion, much better than The Call-Up. Rife with humour, and reliant on clear communication, friendship, and the great equaliser that is loneliness, this is as much a love story as a hopeful reminder that you can make friends in adulthood!
Carmichael has not totally overcome her preference for slightly-odd word order, nor her sometimes-open-door-maybe-push-oh-pull-oh-maybe-its-closed approach to intimate scenes, something which I personally struggled with in The Call-Up, however I found it presented less of an issue in Goalie Interference: I found this very readable, and thoroughly enjoyable. I have read a variety of hockey romance in the last year, and I will say this did remind me a little of Heated Rivalry in places (rivals, a Russian, hints of a power dynamic, a sexuality crisis (kinda, he’s not that stressed about it) and SPOILER an outing), but it was a stand-up story on its own, and had plenty going for it beyond those similarities.
A solid 4 star romance novel!
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