RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 'Coach's Challenge' by Avon Gale
Title: Coach’s Challenge
Series: Scoring Chances #5
Author: Avon Gale
Published: June 26, 2017
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press Cover Artist: Aaron Anderson
Genre: Contemporary Romance; Erotic Romance
Length: 200 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Athlete/Sport: Hockey; May/December; Romantic Comedy; HFN
About Coach’s Challenge It’s been decades since blackmail forced Troy Callahan to retire from playing professional hockey, and he’s built a successful career behind the bench. When he’s offered the opportunity to coach the Asheville Ravens—the most hated team in the ECHL—he’s convinced that his no-nonsense attitude is just what the team needs to put their focus back on hockey. But Troy is disheartened when he finds that the Ravens have signed Shane North, a player known for his aggression. And it only gets worse when Shane’s rough good looks give Troy inappropriate thoughts about a member of his team, even if Shane’s set to retire at the end of the season.
Shane’s career in the majors never quite took off. Wanting to quit on his own terms, Shane agrees to a one-year contract with the Ravens and finds himself playing for a coach who thinks he’s an aging goon and with a team that doesn’t trust him, the coach, or each other. Despite his determination to not get involved, Shane unwillingly becomes part of the team… and is just as unwillingly drawn to the gruff out-and-proud coach. As the Ravens struggle to build a new identity, Shane and Troy succumb to the passion that might cost them everything.
5 HEART READ
REVIEW:
Coach’s Challenge is the fifth book in the Scoring Chances series by Avon Gale. Although characters from previous books do make crossover appearances in each others’ stories, you can definitely read the stories out of order.
Coach Troy is kind of a curmudgeon, well a hot curmudgeon, and Gale uses every opportunity to make the most of his character. Troy has these adorable idiosyncrasies: his puzzle passion, his penchant for PDA, and his incredibly filthy mouth.
I will say that this series is filled with some of the hottest dirty talk I’ve read, but Coach Troy outshines them all!
Shane is adorable. He’s at a crossroads in his life and just not really sure which direction he’ll go now that he’s approaching retirement age. It’s great to see him grow throughout the story and reach a self-fulfilling conclusion. As Troy tells Shane, “Maybe nothing went the way it was supposed to, but that doesn’t mean it went the wrong way.”
As I’ve found with the rest of this series, there’s just the right blend of humor, hockey plays, and hot sex in Coach’s Challenge.
The chemistry between Troy and Shane is electric and I love how open they are with each other. They recognize their attraction straight away, and once they resolve their initial animosity, they go straight to the good stuff. With a bit of an age gap between these two, and the coach/player role play they get up to, it makes for some fun sexy time.
Maybe their self confidence is due to their *ahem* maturity (both men are over 30) and they know better than to waste time.
I was really pleased with the messages Avon Gale includes in this installment, especially the part about respecting and not objectifying women - well said! This may be a locker room filled with rough and tumble hockey players but they’ve got enough self-awareness to call each other out if something’s just not right.
This series has been a blast from the first and always has me laughing out loud!
The stories are clever and fun, with a great connection between the MCs, and just the right amount of sports to advance the plot. I highly recommend the particularly funny Coach’s Challenge. I absolutely love the banter between these two manly men as they tease and goad in the most creative of ways.
A copy of Coach’s Challenge was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by Avon Gale, at no cost and with no expectations in return. We offer our fair and honest opinion on behalf of our readers.
Do you enjoy men of sports?
Meet the Author
Avon Gale wrote her first story at the age of seven, about a “Space Hat” hanging on a rack and waiting for that special person to come along and purchase it — even if it was a bit weirder than the other, more normal hats. Like all of Avon’s characters, the space hat did get its happily ever after — though she’s pretty sure it was with a unicorn. She likes to think her vocabulary has improved since then, but the theme of quirky people waiting for their perfect match is still one of her favorites. Avon grew up in the southern United States, and now lives with her very patient husband in a liberal midwestern college town. When she’s not writing, she’s either doing some kind of craft project that makes a huge mess, reading, watching horror movies, listening to music or yelling at her favorite hockey team to get it together, already. Avon is always up for a road trip, adores Kentucky bourbon, thinks nothing is as stress relieving as a good rock concert and will never say no to candy. At one point, Avon was the mayor of both Jazzercise and Lollicup on Foursquare. This tells you basically all you need to know about her as a person.
Avon is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan at Handspun Literary Agency.
For more from Avon be sure and visit her website.
