Her Hands, My Hands

I have been waiting for this book for what seems *ages*, and I’m delighted to have gotten an ARC. Sleep, who needs sleep.

Beware: suicide, classism, sexism; fairly detailed descriptions of a decomposing body; spoilers for previous A Rip Through Time books.

An Ordinary Sort of Evil, by Kelley Armstrong

By all rights, I should not enjoy the A Rip Through Time series at all: the stories are narrated in first person, present tense–which is extremely difficult to pull off, which is why I generally dislike it; and not only are you in the protagonist’s head for the entire book, everything is happening as you read it! And yet, here we are: I love the series, and the writing draws me deep into the world within a couple of sentences.

As always, I recommend new readers start at the beginning, with the book that gives the series its name, so you can meet each character as Mallory does. However, if you prefer to jump right in with this, the fifth book in the series, the author has included a brief introduction that sets up the scene and clarifies some of the familial and social relationships for the main and regular secondary cast of characters.

And with that said, here’s how the publisher sets up our friends’ new adventure:

Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Mitchell has grown accustomed to life in Victorian Scotland after travelling 150 years into the past into the body of a housemaid. She’s built a new life for herself. Even though she works as an assistant to forensic-science pioneer Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie, she considers them true friends. And with Gray in particular, perhaps, someday, something more.

Late one night, Gray and Mallory are summoned urgently to the home of Lady Adler, a patron of Gray’s undertaking business, and they assume there’s been a death in the household. But instead, they arrive in the midst of a seance with a ghost demanding Gray’s presence. The ghost is Lady Adler’s former maid, who had gone missing but now requests that Gray investigate her murder. Although Gray and Mallory are skeptical, they agree to look into the matter, whether she’s dead or alive. But unsure if there’s been a murder or not, unable to call out the medium as a fraud, and concerned for the fate of the young maid, Gray and Mallory are once again drawn into a mystery much more puzzling–and more dangerous–than it first seems.

At this point in the series, the interpersonal relationships part of the worldbuilding is firmly established; Mallory is both narrator and primary sleuth, usually working closely with Duncan, and with Hugh as their most frequent sidekick–and their main connection to the actual police. There are a few other recurring secondary characters; such as Isla, Duncan’s sister and lady of the house, and the various staff employed by the household.

Life is generally good for Mallory and her new chosen family–and in fact, it’s getting better for two of them: after many years of longing, assumptions and other obstacles, Isla and Hugh have finally come to an understanding, and they are, as the Victorias would say, courting. It should not take much longer before he proposes, she accepts, and they marry.

Which is lovely, and Mallory is happy for them, for they are her dear friends.

Only there’s a bit of a fly in the ointment for her: with Isla gone from Duncan’s household, and now that she’s his assistant rather than a housemaid, Mallory could no longer remain in Duncan’s household–not without a scandal that would damage his personal reputation and possibly affect his livelihood. Which means that, as soon as her friends marry, Mallory will be out on her ear.

Duncan, being a Victorian man, is keenly aware of the potential problem, and he had in fact already come up with what he considers a workable solution: he offers Mallory a marriage of convenience.

Looking at it from his point of view, and given both their circumstances, this is a sensible proposal: he’s both illegitimate–even if his father ‘adopted’ him–and Black, and therefore unlikely to find a well-born bride of his class and education, and Mallory-in-Catriona’s-body is very fetching indeed; no one would be surprised if he ‘married down’, as it were. It’s true such a marriage would open them to talk and criticism, but many already believe he’s consorting with his much younger, so-called ‘assistant’ anyway; the marriage would make him something of a fool in the eyes of society, but it would make Mallory, and his household, respectable..

Looking strictly at the facts, this would seem a viable course of action–if only Mallory didn’t have feelings for Duncan.

“Maybe marrying a guy you’re secretly crazy about seems like the perfect solution. Every romance-novel marriage of convenience tells me this will go smashingly–we’ll marry and he’ll fall madly in love with me. That’s the fictional version. The real-life one is that he sees me as a platonic friend, and that isn’t going to change with a wedding ring. I don’t want to marry a guy who doesn’t love me. And I sure as hell don’t want to marry a guy I’ve fallen for who doesn’t feel the same way.” (Chapter 2)

The banter between the four core characters is fantastic, and I laughed out loud more than once while inhaling this book. Then again, all the dialogue is marvelous, and clearly conveys characterization for everyone Mallory interacts with; there’s a particularly lovely bit about Victorian flirting–as opposed to 21st Century flirting–that had me giggling. (Yes, Mallory, you are indeed obtuse when it comes to flirting–and the time period has zilch to do with that.)

And then there are her observations of the people around her.

“It can be hard to tell when Isla’s having a pleasant social visit and when she’d rather stick needles under her fingernails. She’s perfected the art of acting as if every host and guest is fascinating. Lady Adler, it seems, is fine in small doses, but she’s also a bored old woman who has nothing better to do than talk. And talk. And talk.” (Chapter 10)

I adore the Victorian setting as seen through Mallory’s modern eyes; there is so much historical detail that would become endless exposition otherwise, but by making all of it Mallory’s thoughts–how things are the same, how things are different, what she knew or had inferred about the period vis-à-vis the realities she’s now living, and so forth–all the stage dressing becomes story (see footnote 1). Her musings on “when in Rome…”, and where her lines on that are (clean glasses–washed with actual soap, thanks–is one), feel very real, and are very endearing to someone who never wanted to go camping, even when I was young, lo those many decades ago (running water and working sewers for “most essential human invention”–with antibiotics a close second).

Of course, this also allows for exploration of 21st Century mores, from politics to sociology, from religion to economics, to…well, everything. We are now, as we’ve always been, very human–for better, and for much, much worse.

There are bleak themes and dark moments–a young woman is dead, after all, and no authority cares for justice; both Duncan’s and Mallory’s expertise is dismissed out of hand–because he’s Black and she’s a young buxom blonde woman herself. Hugh’s professional position remains a balancing act between seeking that justice, and deferring to “the great and the good” above him in the police hierarchy. They all must tread lightly and keep the peace, for rocking the boat too much could easily ruin their lives.

All the same, they are all determined to uncover the truth behind Nellie’s untimely death–and if doing so brings some assholes down a few pegs, well, neither Mallory nor Duncan or Hugh will feel bad about it.

As usual with this series, I read the book in one sitting; however, I paid close attention to the action, as Ms Armstrong writes excellent fair play mysteries. My efforts were rewarded in that I could follow the clues and understand Mallory’s conclusions; even though I didn’t reach the solution before she did, I certainly enjoyed the ride!

And then, there’s the little Easter Egg near the end (that made me literally kick my feet).

An Ordinary Sort of Evil–and boy howdy, does the title fit!–gets 9.25 out of 10. And now I wait, impatiently, until December for the next novella in the series.

“For people who are usually good at communicating, we are absolute shit at this.” (Chapter 29)

This book will be released in the U.S. on May 19, 2026.

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1 I mentioned how this works in my review of Murder by Memory, by Olivia Waite, where it’s also done brilliantly.

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My reviews for the books in the series so far:

• A Rip Through Time
• The Poisoner’s Ring
• “Cocktails and Chloroform”
• Disturbing the Dead
• “Schemes and Scandals”
• Death at a Highland Wedding
• “Kirkyards and Kindness”

I was taken in by the cover–come on, look at it, how could I not? The blurb clinched it, even though it didn’t register on me at the time that the book is narrated in first person. Ah well; live and learn.

Beware: references to a character with Alzheimer’s.

Buried Above Ground, by Mike Ripley

Despite generally reading a lot of mysteries, I had managed until now to remain unaware of the author’s long backlist–34 books published so far, with another to be released in a few weeks, mostly as part of two long-running series. This book, however, appears to be the first in a new series with a somewhat unusual structure: the story is divided in sections narrated in first person, past tense, by a different character each.

Here’s how the publisher’s back cover blurb describes it:

An original spin on the crime novel in which the race to gain the rights to an author’s backlist proves to be more head-scratching – and deadly! – than the plots in his books.

The Librarian

It’s been two decades since mystery writer Duncan Torrens was last published. I should know, I was his editor. So why a blogger would turn up asking questions about the rights to his books is beyond me . . .

The Reader

That librarian Roly is a bit odd. You’d think he’d be happy with my blog’s research into a largely forgotten author, but he’s . . . resistant. If I can get into Duncan’s home – and his mysterious garden shed – I know I’ll find what I’m looking for . . .

The Publisher

Torrens’ books are crying out for a revival. I just need that blogger, Jacon, to work out who holds the rights to his backlist. Then I can acquire them before Duncan’s old publishing house realises they’ve missed a trick!

The Editor

I never worked directly with Duncan before he died, but if someone is sniffing round, there must be money involved. I just need to find out what’s happened to the rights before they do . . .

The Writer

After twenty years, will the sudden interest in this author’s forgotten mysteries reveal a dark – and deadly – twist?

Told from the point of view of five unreliable narrators, none of whom can be trusted – The Librarian, The Reader, The Publisher, The Editor and The Writer – this amusing and darkly intriguing novel is a refreshingly fun, subversive take on the crime fiction genre.

As anyone who has read Agatha Christie can tell you, it is quite possible to write a murder mystery narrated by the killer without having them lie outright; all they have to do is omit a thing or two as they recount the facts of the case, and voilà! you have an apparently unsolvable mystery that nonetheless plays the way a fair mystery does: everything needed to solve the case is in the text.

I am generally not a fan of this device, though I can appreciate its cleverness when it’s well done; my issue with this book is more about pacing: it’s a short book that read to me like a much longer one, and not in a good way.

Part of this is more or less unavoidable, given who the narrators are. For example, Roland Wilkes, the librarian, had been an editor with a small independent publisher for a dozen years, until a sale to a large publisher eliminated his job; there’s a lot of bitterness and publishing inside baseball there, which bogs down the narrative from the start. Then there’s Jacon Archer, the reader of the blurb, who is clearly in the autism spectrum; he is obsessed with Golden Age crime fiction, and relates to the world–and any other fiction–from that perspective. Steven Crow the publisher, is a narcissist, and Robina Robinson, the editor, is a cold blooded predator.

In short, I didn’t like any of the characters, so it was a chore to be stuck in their heads for the duration; in fact, the only character I did like was the person investigating the murders, and we only meet her through the eyes of people I already disliked.

On top of which, by the time she shows up–after the second murder happens–I already knew the identity of the killer and most of the mechanics of the murders, even though I had to read to the end for some of the particulars.

In sum, while I appreciate the originality of the conceit, I didn’t much enjoy the execution, and as I was dissatisfied with the ending, don’t feel compelled to read more in the same vein.

Buried Above Ground gets a 7.50 out of 10.

What with one thing and another, I missed the release of this book–and I had so been looking forward to it! So in the spirit of ‘better late than never’, here are my thoughts.

Beware: drinking; rape; suicide; serious burning; hospital scenes; institutional/systemic abuse and complicity.

Fire Must Burn, by Allison Montclari

I am not sure how it’s come to pass that this is the eight full-length novel in the Sparks and Bainbridge series; since it is, I would strongly encourage any new readers to start at the beginning, by reading The Right Sort of Man. Not, mind you, that you couldn’t read this book as a stand alone and enjoy it, but you would miss a lot of the nuance and character development that happens in the previous stories.

At any rate, it’s summer again in London, the business of matchmaking is doing quite well, as wedding bonuses are being paid with encouraging regularity by satisfied clients. With Ronnie and John gone to stay in the country with Lord and Lady Bainbridge over the school holiday, Gwen is spending more time with one Salvatore “Sally” Danielli, as Iris continues to struggle on the road to sobriety while learning to cope with her grief over Archie’s death.

It would have been a peaceful summer, had the needs of King and country–in the person of Iris’s former boss–not made themselves known.

The publisher’s blurb sets the scene thusly:

Sparks fly when an old friend comes to town . . .

London, 1947. After recent events have left the normally steadfast Iris Sparks thoroughly shaken, she’s looking forward to some peace. With The Right Sort doing well, she and business partner Gwen Bainbridge are due a holiday. Until Iris’s former boss enlists their help for a secret mission.

Iris, who left British intelligence after the war, is being recruited for her Cambridge connection to one Anthony Danforth. She hasn’t seen Tony in almost ten years, yet she and Gwen must manipulate him into hiring their marriage service.

Tony’s suspected of being a Soviet operative, and an undercover agent posing as his perfect match could discover the truth. Despite her reluctance at being dragged back into the world of espionage, Iris agrees. After all, Tony was once a very good friend. If he’s innocent, she’ll happily prove it. If not? Well, no one ever said being a spy was easy . . .

In the course of their previous adventure just a few weeks prior, Gwen and Iris incurred a debt of sorts with British intelligence, and now the mysterious Brigadier has come around to collect: there’s a certain gentleman with political ambitions in the Foreign Service, whose loyalties are somewhat suspect. Between their old friendship and her new business, Iris is in the perfect position to recruit Anthony Danforth as a client for The Right Sort, and then set him up with an operative–a cocky young woman who, in several ways, out-Sparks Sparks.

In theory, that introduction would end Iris’ and Gwen’s involvement in the matter, but Tony is delighted to have reconnected with his old college friend–the only one among his intimates to have survived the war–and hopes to revive the friendship, whatever happens, or doesn’t, on the marriage front. Having also missed their friendship, Iris is agreeable–the Brigadier, not so keen.

And then things take a very dark turn when someone tosses a Molotov cocktail at Tony, almost killing him.

This is one of those books where saying much more than this about the plot would spoil the reading experience; all I can say about that is that the author gives us all the information necessary to answer all the questions posed by the text. Unfortunately, due to the inherently devious and fucked up nature of spy games, I was annoyed by some elements of the denouement. (I prefer my “righting of the universe” to be complete and unambiguous.)

As usual, the story is told in third person, past tense, from the points of view of our two protagonists; however, we also get flashbacks from Iris’ point of view, to Cambridge in 1935, and are reminded how events in the past cast their shadow on the present..

It was so very interesting to meet young Iris–bright, defiant, kind–and so painful to see life harden her. It was lovely to see Gwen finding a second chance at joy with Sally, even as he struggles with his own war demons (nota bene: not PTSD as much as guilt).

The sense of period is, as always, excellent; everything from the class friction to the technology, to recent history and the current geopolitical considerations, is carefully thought of and introduced organically. The language is delicious, and the characters feel for the most part like real people; the only exceptions would be the Brigadier and his chauffeur/bodyguard, who behave entirely too much like the stereotypical amoral manipulator and muscle, respectively, for my taste.

Fire Must Burn is a very good mystery, and the events taking place reveal a lot about Sparks’ past that have only been hinted at since the start of the series–that is very satisfactory indeed. It is also quite sad, and more than a bit enraging, in places (heed thee the caveats at the top). 9.25 out of 10.

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My reviews for all the stories in the series so far:

• The Right Sort of Man
• A Royal Affair
• “The Haunting of the Desks”
• A Rogue’s Company
• The Unkept Woman
• The Lady from Burma
• Murder at the White Palace
• An Excellent Thing in a Woman

Almost ten years after its initial release, here are my thoughts on the movie “Hidden Figures”.

Beware: I rant–about racism, sexism, and the problem with white saviors. If you want the tl;dr: it’s a good movie, deserves the accolades, and the criticism, it got back then. If you have two hours and want to remember a more optimistic time, this is a good movie to watch.

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“Hidden Figures” is based (very loosely, according to Wikipedia and the sources it cites) on the non-fiction book of the same name, by Margot Lee Shetterly. The book highlights the stories of five women–four of them Black–who played key rôles in the success of the U.S. space program over the U.S.R.R. during the Space Race, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The movie focuses only on Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan over a period of just three years, while taking various liberties with both the facts and their timeline.

The trailer will give you a very close idea of what you’d get, should you decide to watch this movie:

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Straight off the bat, let me say that I love the premise: show us how Black women, historically and contemporaneously one of the most marginalized group of people in the fucking U.S. of A., played a pivotal role in getting white men to space. Show us the challenges they faced, show us their triumphs. And yes, absolutely, show us the people who supported their bid for equal treatment.

“Hidden Figures” does all of the above well enough; not for nothing did it get several Oscar nominations (the only silver lining to not winning any of them, is that it lost to the other big Black movies of that year: to”Moonlight” for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, while Octavia Spencer lost to Viola Davis in “Fences”).

The casting is truly fantastic; not only do we get Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe as the titular ‘hidden figures’ of the story, but all the actors in secondary and even minor rôles do a magnificent job of bringing the period and its institutions to life.

The production values are excellent, and belie the movie’s small budget; the use of historical and archival footage interspersed with the movie’s own, grounds the action in the period and shows that, despite what some of the people involved in its production claim (more below), no one can live a ‘colorless’ life in a racist society–you are either complicit (quietly at best, violently at worst), an unwilling victim, or an agitator for change.

With a $25 million budget, this movie earned back over nine times as much on release; in 2016 people were hungry for the optimism it centers. Yes, racism is violence–psychological, emotional, financial, institutional–that can turn into physical abuse on a dime and with little to no cause. And yet, Black people, and Black women especially, find ways to thrive and triumph, despite all the obstacles in their way.

Not, mind you, that it doesn’t cost them; it is not just the openly racist people, or the openly misogynistic people, but it’s also the fact that when you have to work harder than everyone else around you, you end up shortchanging other areas of your life. You spend less time with your spouse and/or your children, you burn out yet have to keep going regardless; professionally, you hit wall after all, and are told by the people who keep erecting those walls that the walls exist because you are fundamentally lacking.

The three women the movie focuses on faced all the above in their actual lives, and managed to thrive and excel, and become key parts of the teams they worked in, despite living in a racist and misogynistic society, and they deserve all the recognition this movie finally brought to their lives. (And again today, and more than ever, because fuck the white supremacist fuckers whose ultimate goal is to deny agency to women and to reinstate slavery for every non-white person in the U.S.)

So, if you can, watch “Hidden Figures”, and as you enjoy the story for what it is, realize that there are countless Black and otherwise non-white people in the history of the U.S. who have played outsized parts in the historical, technological and financial progress of the country, whose very existence has been deliberately and systematically erased from the nation’s consciousness. (See footnote 1)

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My problem with the movie is the clear white savior narrative that was shoehorned in there, with subplots that were invented from whole cloth (one involving the lack of ‘colored’ restrooms in most buildings in the NASA complex, another involving Mary Jackson having to petition the court in order to attend a whites only school).

And the only reason I can see for inserting those subplots is to have white men intervene and save the day. The white judge is persuaded to grant Mary’s petition, and the Kevin Costner character gets to wield a sledgehammer and proclaim that “at NASA we all pee the same color”. (You don’t say.)

The book doesn’t have a white savior narrative, and no wonder: Margot Lee Shetterly is a Black woman. The two people who wrote the screenplay, Theodore Melfi, who also directed, and Allison Shroeder, are white. In the ‘historical accuracy’ section of the Wikipedia page for the movie, there’s this note:

The scene where Harrison smashes the Colored Ladies Room sign never happened, as in real life Katherine Goble Johnson refused to walk the extra distance to use the colored bathroom and, in her words, “just went to the white one.” Harrison also lets her into Mission Control to witness the launch. Neither scene happened in real life, and screenwriter Theodore Melfi said he saw no problem with adding the scenes, saying, “There needs to be white people who do the right thing, there needs to be Black people who do the right thing, and someone does the right thing. And so who cares who does the right thing, as long as the right thing is achieved?” (see footnote 2)

And it bothers me that we could have had a story of Black excellence told accurately, from a fully Black USian perspective, and instead we got the white savior, the reformed racists, and the eternal forgiveness and forbearance from the Black protagonists, because too many white people truly cannot imagine a world in which their feelings aren’t centered (see footnote 3).

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1 Florida under DeSantis has been espousing alternative history courses as it is. (Full text of the curriculum, here; historian Kevin Kruse’s pithy takedown on Bluesky, here). Please note that, at least as of today, those courses aren’t counted as Advanced Placement college credits outside of the state.

2 Only a white man would not only say that, believing it fully, but also get butthurt when called on his bullshit. As Zeba Blay at The Huffington Post says, “…whether a white man desegregated the NASA bathrooms or not is, at this point, kind of irrelevant, and far less interesting than Melfi’s own processing of the small waves of criticism he’s received over this in a vast sea of praise.” And! “as Hollywood strives towards further and further inclusivity both in front of and behind the camera, how will white filmmakers ― directors, producers, writers, casting directors and so on ― react to being held accountable for telling POC stories? And more importantly ― how will they hold themselves accountable?”

3 Throughout the movie, both the Kirsten Dunst character and the Jim Parsons character are openly assholeish; the former full-on racist, the latter more openly sexist but also racist. In the last scenes of the movie, they’re both redeemed and forgiven. Because of course they are.

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The blurb, as it appears currently on the publihser’s page:

In this riveting piece of NASA history, before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space

Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women—pioneering women in STEM and some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a foundational moment in space exploration history, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

Another month, another Game Changers review! To recap: I tore through all six books in the series back in early December 2025, and decided on the spot that I would review them all. Life and things and stuff happened, so I’m taking it slow.

Beware: about 15 years age gap between two consenting adults having sex; explicit on page sex; some kink (mostly mild power play during sex); swearing; asshole parents more concerned with image than their son’s wellbeing.

Common Goal, by Rachel Reid

This is the fourth book in the Game Changers series; it takes place in New York, where we reconnect with Eric Bennett, Scott’s friend and teammate, and with Kyle Swift, Kip’s friend and coworker at The Kingfisher, a gay sports bar. As the kind of reader who tries to always read series in order, I would stress that in this case, reading at least Game Changer before reading this book would be a good idea. For starters, there’s quite a bit of character development for both leads, and especially for Kyle, in that book; plus, both Scott and Kip play a role on how Eric’s and Kyle’s relationship plays out.

With that said, and as mentioned in my review of Tough Guy, the previous book in the series, this is my least favorite book in the six-book series. (See footnote 1) Allow me to explain why.

But first, here’s how the publisher’s blurb sets the book up:

Veteran goaltender Eric Bennett has faced down some of the toughest shooters on the ice, but nothing prepared him for his latest challenge—life after hockey. It’s time to make some big changes, starting with finally dating men for the first time.

Graduate student Kyle Swift moved to New York nursing a broken heart. He’d sworn to find someone his own age to crush on (for once). Until he meets a gorgeous, distinguished silver fox hockey player. Despite their intense physical attraction, Kyle has no intention of getting emotionally involved. He’ll teach Eric a few tricks, have some mutually consensual fun, then walk away.

Eric is more than happy to learn anything Kyle brings to the table. And Kyle never expected their friends-with-benefits arrangement to leave him wanting more. Happily-ever-after might be staring them in the face, but it won’t happen if they’re too stubborn to come clean about their feelings.

Everything they want is within reach… They just have to be brave enough to grab it.

This book takes place during the 2019-2020 hockey season; in the Game Changers universe, it’s been over two years since Scott came out, in a very public manner, after winning the Stanley Cup. And though so much remains the same, much has changed forever for queer professional hockey players, even though not many have come out since.

Eric Bennett, one of Scott’s closest friends, has been divorced for over a year; though his marriage was in many ways over for longer, the legal action has finally spurred him to explore his bisexuality. Given he married young, before realizing that he is equally attracted to men and women, and that he was faithful to his then-wife Holly for the two decades they were together, he finds the idea of putting himself out there daunting.

To be clear, Eric would find trying to meet women daunting: he’s a quiet forty year old man who doesn’t drink, and let us be honest, the dating and hook-up scene is really hard for people who don’t drink. Add his age to that combo, and you see how he’s facing an uphill battle. Then, on top of that, he’s never flirted, never mind been, with any man, and his closest exposure to gay culture has been witnessing Scott’s and Kip’s relationship deepen over the past three years, and one can absolutely understand Eric’s nervousness.

And then, there’s his hangup regarding age; it’s not just that he feels really old at 41–partly, as far as professional athletes go, he’s essentially geriatric, and his body lets him know on the regular that spending two decades getting hit by stray (or well-aimed) pucks, and the occasional fast-moving 200+ lbs athlete, results in permanent damage. And partly, because he’s acutely aware of the sugar daddy/dirty old man stereotype, so common to aging wealthy men seeking to revive their youth though their lovers’. Eric is determined not to be one of those gross men, taking advantage of someone else’s best years.

For his part, Kyle is struggling with his feelings towards Kip, and generally with his personal life. They’ve been close friends for years, but their friendship started with a kiss, and Kyle has never quite stopped being at least halfway in love with Kip. But then, Kyle has a long history of falling for people he shouldn’t, going back to his very first relationship, with a much older married man, which started as soon as Kyle turned “legal” after a grooming period of indeterminate duration.

In the seven or so years since, Kyle slept and conducted ill-fated affairs with many men who resembled that first lover in one way or another; until falling for Kip–generous, honest, loving Kip–helped him realize that he can, and should, aim for better. No more married or otherwise straight-presenting men who only want sex and to keep Kyle a seedy secret.

Which means that he’s less than charitably inclined towards Eric, who wears a wedding ring and clumsily tries to flirt with him at work.

Soon enough that misunderstanding is cleared up, and eventually Eric trusts Kyle with most of his secrets–including that he’s planning on retiring at the end of this hockey season, and that he has no clue how to go about exploring his attraction to men, even though he really wants to.

Because the physical attraction between them is strong, and Kyle’s self-preservation instincts are stunted, he offers to help Eric find his footing in this area. At first, it’s just where to go and how to flirt, but it soon evolves into a friends-with-sex-tutoring-benefits.

Which is all good and fine, except that Eric is bound and determined to keep an emotional distance from Kyle, so as to not “take advantage” of the latter. Eric’s resistance to an age-gap romance becomes only more entrenched upon learning of the gross behavior of Kyle’s first lover. (I have no doubt that, should Eric ever came face to face with that fucker, someone would end up with a few loose teeth.)

Meanwhile, Kyle is falling ever harder for this very decent and sexy man who trusts him so much, while also trying to keep him at arm’s length. Which, to put it mildly, is confusing as hell and enraging as fuck; soon-to-turn 26 is not too young to know what you want, in any universe. And that fact doesn’t change depending on the age of the person you fall in love with.

The world these characters move in is populated by well-realized secondary characters; of course, Scott and Kip, and Carter Vaughn, a friend and teammate at the New York Admirals, but there are also a couple of Ilya and Shane cameos or mentions that manage to portray them as more than name-drops.

The sex is, as always with Ms Reid, well written and enthusiastic, and active consent is emphasized in a way that raises the heat index. And eventually, the two men have an honest conversation, which leads to a mercifully brief third act separation; I could say that “all’s well that ends well”, were it not for my issues with the book.

One of them is that I am not fully convinced of the conflict on Eric’s side; his turnabout at the end comes a little too easily, and perhaps too close too close to his last game, to feel truly heartfelt. It makes the previous conflict ring somewhat false to me.

However, and no matter that fiction is supposed to make sense when reality often doesn’t, I’m sure we’ve all met (or been) people like Eric, struggling to make sense of our own feelings when they contradict each other in irreconciliable ways. So, on balance, I could say that the conflict didn’t warrant 300 pages of waffling, and move on.

Except, that’s not my biggest problem with the narrative.

My biggest problem here revolves around how quickly all that just friends, no feelings sex-tutoring turns to power play. To be clear, there’s not a lot of kink, just mild dominance and submission, and only during/related to sex. What bothers me about it is that it seems to come out of nowhere. There is no hint whatsoever, when he reflects upon his marriage and how it failed both himself and Holly, his ex-wife, that perhaps Eric had been curious about dominance/submission in any way, or that perhaps he regretted not having explored that part of his sexual appetites.

There’s literally nothing of the sort; it’s like Eric has never heard of it, and then he’s all in for it with Kyle.

And yes, the fact that he and Holly had sex less and less frequently, and that it had stopped being all that satisfactory for years, is mentioned. But from that to sexual submission with a man you barely know, and with whom you absolutely refuse to have an emotionally binding relationship, there’s a rather large leap, and I don’t feel the writing nailed it.

I’ll reiterate that this is not a bad book, by a long chalk; it’s just that it fails to reach the levels of some of the other books in the series, and it suffers in the comparison. Luckily, the best in the series is yet to come.

Common Goal gets 7.75 out of 10.

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Behold, the original cover for Common Goal, doing the work a cover should do to signal that this is a book for adults.

As Kelly Jensen has been reporting on for years (see this piece over at BookRiot), the YA-fication of adult fiction that is perceived to be exclusively by and for women, is not just a caprice from publishing execs, but part of a dangerous puritanical trend that both infantilizes women, and serves as an excuse for the banning of actual YA literature in schools and public libraries alike.

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1 The first six Game Changer books were published between 2018 and 2022; a seventh book, Unrivaled, was announced in January 2026, with a release date for September. Unfortunately, due among other things to Rachel Reid’s health, the publication date has been pushed back to June 2027 (likely after “Heated Rivalry” season 2 airs)

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My reviews of the Game Changers novels so far:

• Game Changer
• Heated Rivalry
• Tough Guy