Egotistical Puckboy

Ezra Palaszczuk plays for Boston and lives loudly: tabloid headlines, a string of men, no interest in hiding anything. Anton Hayes wingers for Philadelphia and does the opposite. He guards his sexuality from the press as carefully as he guards the puck. The two have needled each other from opposite ends of the ice for years, then spend one drunk night proving the needling was never the whole story.

Neither can shake it afterward. When Anton gets traded to Boston, he lands on Ezra's own team and in Ezra's own building. The rivalry curdles into something they keep meeting in private to work out. Anton's discretion holds even as his grip on Ezra tightens. Ezra, who has never hidden anything about himself, finds he likes being wanted that possessively.

Egotistical Puckboy is the first Puckboys book, a contemporary mm sports romance. It sets its two leads' opposite relationships to their own sexuality against each other as much as it sets them against rival teams. A league support network for gay players, the Queer Collective, gives Anton somewhere to land as he decides how much to let the public see.

It reads fast and stays light on its feet, more banter and heat than brooding, even while it takes Anton's closeted status seriously. It ends the way an opening book in a hockey romance series should: with room left for the rest of the roster.