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As my mother's 24/7 caregiver, November being National Family Caregivers Month has always been important to me. Not because I want personal recognition for what I do but to help show people that caregiving is more than just medical assistance, it can also be emotional, physical, psychological, that it effects every aspects of a person's life, it can be temporary, short term, long term, chronic,. I would give anything to make it so my mother did not need the assistance but that isn't possible so I do this so she can have the best quality of life and still live in her own home. So I realized that there are stories out there that have caregivers and whether it's a big or small part of the plot doesn't matter, they help show people what caregivers provide all within very entertaining romances and reading experiences.
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Dance on Ice by RJ Scott & VL Locey
Summary:Chesterford Coyotes #3
For the figure skater and the hockey player, their sport demands total devotion, but can falling in love come first?
My name is Shaun Stanton, and I’m bisexual.
In hockey-obsessed Chesterford Academy, Shaun Stanton stands out as the star player and captain of the Chesterford Coyotes, and his exceptional skills have already attracted the attention of NHL scouts. He lives and breathes hockey, but there’s more to his story. His father wants Shaun to be the star he never was, and their relationship is a complex mix of guidance and intimidation. Worse, while hockey is Shaun’s sanctuary and a key part of who he is, he harbors a secret his dad can never discover: Shaun is gay He’s caught between the future career he’s destined for, and the truth he has to hide. There’s one bright light in his life, the vibrant figure skater who shares the early morning practice ice, a friend he worries about, but has now become something more—Kenji is everything Shaun wants and can’t have.
My name is Kenji Kelly, and I need to be perfect.
Kenji Kelly is a young man who walks two worlds: his family is a beautiful mix of American and Asian cultures. He loves both figure skating and hockey, and he’s a out and proud pansexual teen. While it seems to the world around him he has it all, deep down Kenji has a secret that’s slowly becoming harder to conceal. His life is the ice and his coach does not believe in failure. The one person who knows his hidden secret is Shaun, the captain of the Coyotes and a friend from youth hockey days. Shaun’s gaze towards Kenji, once filled with concern, now seems to hold something deeper, unsettling Kenji but also igniting similar giddy, burgeoning feelings in him. As their feelings for each other become stronger, the secrets both young men carry grow heavier and more distressing with each passing day.
NB: Trigger warning for mention of an eating disorder.
Original Review April 2024:
I said with the other two entries in Chestorford Coyotes and I'll say it again here: with a few exceptions I generally haven't read YA since I was about 14 years old but as this series is part of the Scott/Locey Hockey Universe there was no way I wouldn't give it a go. And boy was I glad I did!
Dance on Ice is an emotionally charged read that will first break the heart but then repair and warm it too. You can't help but feel immense anger towards both Shaun's dad and Kenji's coach, Ilya. Will either be redeemable? For that you'll have to read Dance for yourself but I will say emotions run very high and not always very favorably.
Watching both Shaun and Kenji become the people they are meant to be is hugely gratifying. The bulk of the story is the now timeframe but through the boys' inner thoughts we get a sense of who they were before their friendship went down the crapper so seeing them move past that is as I said, gratifying but also extremely heartwarming.
Scott and Locey do a magnificent job telling Kenji's eating disorder and how it is always there, no matter how you get a hold on it with therapy and time, it will always be lingering, needing to be cared for. What I really loved was they not only tell Kenji's side but also the side of those who care about them, who want to help, who tend to put their foot in their mouth more times than they intend in their quest to help.
It was nice to see Trent from Deep Edge, book 3 in the authors' Harrisburg Railers, the original series that jumpstarted their hockey universe. I had a feeling he would make an appearance with the figure skating connection and the authors didn't disappoint.
Dance on Ice is a lovely story of hurt, comfort, friendship, young love, but above all healing on multiple levels. As far as I know, Dance is the last entry in this series but I for one would love to see a holiday story to see where our young couples are 5 or 10 years down the road. Dance may take you through an emotional wringer but in all the heart-filled amazing ways.
Finding Home #3
Gideon Ramsay is so far in the closet he should be a talking faun.
A talented, mercurial, and often selfish man, Gideon has everything he should want in life. Fame, money, acting awards – he has it all. Everything but honesty. At the advice of his agent, Gideon has concealed his sexuality for years. But it’s starting to get harder to hide, and his increasingly wild behaviour is threatening to destroy his career.
Then he’s laid low by a serious illness and into his life comes Eli Jones. Eli is everything that Gideon can’t understand. He’s sunny tempered, friendly, and optimistic. Even worse, he’s unaffected by grumpiness and sarcasm, which forms ninety percent of Gideon’s body weight. And now Gideon is trapped with him without any recourse to the drugs and alcohol that have previously eased his way through awkward situations.
However, as Gideon gets to know the other man, he finds himself wildly attracted to his lazy smiles and warm, scruffy charm that seem to fill a hole inside Gideon that’s been empty for a long time. Will he give in to this incomprehensible attraction when it could mean the end of everything that he’s worked for?
From the bestselling author of the Mixed Messages series comes a story about a man who needs to realise that being true to yourself is really just a form of finding home.
This is the third book in the Finding Home series but it can be read as a standalone.
Dance on Ice by RJ Scott & VL Locey
There was a heated exchange of words, Kenji skating backward and away, almost at center ice. All I needed to do was to push forward on one skate, and glide there, and we could say hello. We’d been best friends once, and if I apologized—if I was honest with him about how I’d messed up—maybe we could go back to being friends. As the argument escalated between my dad and Kenji’s coach, I felt a knot form in my stomach and I was paralyzed by my own insecurities. I watched Kenji and cursed myself for not having the courage to reach out to him.
Dad was becoming more animated, Kenji’s coach just as loud, gesticulating wildly.
I didn’t have the balls to skate to the center ice.
And Kenji didn’t turn to look at me.
Dad returned, as scarlet as me, but where my reaction was shame and confusion, his was temper and hatred.
“You’re sharing the ice,” he snapped.
He was so angry, and I didn’t know how to feel. He’d sacrificed everything for me; worked three jobs to keep me in hockey gear, drove me to every practice and game, and even volunteered as a coach for the team. The thought of letting him down filled me with guilt.
I owed him.
He’d poured his heart and soul into my hockey career, and it all centered on us practicing six days out of seven on this ice, and today we didn’t have the ice.
I should feel territorial, right? It was what Dad wanted me to feel, I was sure. Instead I felt… weird. Then something hit me. Why was I sharing the ice that was for the school? I was somewhere for the Academy teams to practice and play, and it wasn’t open to the public, courtesy of a shit ton of funding from very rich benefactors at our very wealthy campus. Why was someone from outside Chesterford Academy on our ice?
“They’ll let anyone join this damn school, freaking twirly shit getting in our way. Fucking girls out here on our ice.”
“He’s—”
“No!”
I wanted to defend Kenji, to explain that figure skaters were as valid as hockey players, same as I’d done when Kenji had left hockey for the figure skating and begged to be allowed to be friends with him still. But my dad’s hatred had spilled over and scared me.
“Shut your mouth and listen up,” Dad snapped. His reaction stung, his threats left me feeling powerless and defeated, and small.
So small.
“Figure skaters are boys as well,” I word-vomited, thankful the boards were between me and him when Dad stiffened and sent me a stare that would kill other people. Dad had never touched me, apart from fixing my hockey hold, or straightening my back, but his expression was murderous, and that meant the curses would fly and he’d take out his impotent rage on me with words. He leaned over the barrier, and my heart skipped, my chest tightened. I held my position and tilted my chin as he lowered his voice, hate dripping from every word.
Gideon by Lily Morton
I shake my head. “So what’s in store for the middle of the night?”
“It’s six o’clock in the morning,” he scoffs.
“The only way I see six o’clock in the morning is when I’m coming home to go to bed.”
“Well, Mick Jagger, that wild way of life is over for the moment, so instead we’ve got wake-the-day meditation.”
“Did you just compare me to a rock star who looks like a raisin on a pair of legs?” I blink. “Wake-the-day meditation,” I say in a tone of absolute disgust. “What the fuck is that? Am I to be responsible for the sun coming up on this ship too?”
Eli tosses a bundle of clothes at me. “I’m sorry to interrupt your messianic leanings,” he says, not at all apologetically. “Put those on and hurry up. We’ll have breakfast afterwards.”
I look down at the tight, grey marl, full-length leggings and black vest in dismay. “Surely there must be something else we can do?” I say, and I can hear the desperation in my voice. “My brother’s the spiritual yoga person in our family.”
He stops and looks at me curiously. “Is he? Is he any good?”
“Very,” I say, hearing the pride in my voice. “He teaches a class in the village now.”
“That’s an accomplishment for him, I think.”
I peer at him. “He had a stutter,” I say. “You could probably hear a trace of it in the way he speaks now.”
He nods. “It must have been nice having you as a brother.”
I wince. “Not really,” I mutter, feeling his interest sharpen, but he doesn’t ask me any questions. His infuriating lack of pushing for answers always makes me want to knock him over the fucking head with them. “I was a terrible brother,” I admit. “I was away at boarding school anyway, but when I was at home I was impatient with him and distant. I’m trying now, though,” I finish earnestly. “I want a relationship with him.”
“You must be doing something right,” Eli says in a mellow voice. “He obviously loves you.”
“That’s family. You can’t help that,” I scoff. Nevertheless, I feel a relaxing in the tenseness that always surrounds me when I think of the mess I made of the relationship with my brother.
“Not always,” he says, and there’s a finality in his voice that makes me drop the conversation.
Even though it’s early in the morning, there’s still a bustle to the ship as staff hose down the outside decks and sort out the bars to the accompaniment of a multitude of languages spoken in bright, eager voices.
I follow Eli up the steps towards the top deck, trying not to stare at his arse in those leggings. It’s actually impossible, as if my eyes are magnetized and he’s got an iron backside. Nevertheless, I manage to wrench my gaze away from the magnet’s pull and that’s when I spot it.
“Is that a tattoo on your back?” I ask, looking at the grey lines I can see as his vest shifts.
He looks back, smiling slightly. “It might be. Why?”
“No reason,” I immediately say, trying for an air of studied disinterest. By the quirk of his mouth I’m guessing I’m not hitting any acting strides today, so I give up. “I like tattoos,” I say instead.
“It is a tattoo,” he says. “It’s a dragon, which is very stereotypical for a Welsh man. And also stupid because it fucking hurt having something that big over my back.” He looks at me. “Have you got any?”
I shake my head. “Nope. It’s not really good for an actor.”
He comes to a stop, the breeze blowing strands of hair around his clear, unlined forehead. “But loads of actors have got them.”
“Now they have. When I started in the business it wasn’t encouraged.”
He nods seriously. “I guess they were too concerned with introducing sound into films at that point.”
For a beat I stare at him and then, to my amazement, laughter bubbles out and I give a disgusting snort. “Yes, damn those pesky talkies.”
Eli grins at me happily before turning round and mounting the stairs in his characteristic long-legged strides. I’ve noticed that he never seems to rush anywhere, but somehow he seems to get to places quicker than anyone else.
RJ ScottWriting love stories with a happy ever after – cowboys, heroes, family, hockey, single dads, bodyguards
USA Today bestselling author RJ Scott has written over one hundred romance books. Emotional stories of complicated characters, cowboys, single dads, hockey players, millionaires, princes, bodyguards, Navy SEALs, soldiers, doctors, paramedics, firefighters, cops, and the men who get mixed up in their lives, always with a happy ever after.
She lives just outside London and spends every waking minute she isn’t with family either reading or writing. The last time she had a week’s break from writing, she didn’t like it one little bit, and she has yet to meet a box of chocolates she couldn’t defeat.
V.L. Locey loves worn jeans, yoga, belly laughs, walking, reading and writing lusty tales, Greek mythology, the New York Rangers, comic books, and coffee.
(Not necessarily in that order.)
She shares her life with her husband, her daughter, one dog, two cats, a flock of assorted domestic fowl, and two Jersey steers.
When not writing spicy romances, she enjoys spending her day with her menagerie in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania with a cup of fresh java in hand.
Lily is a bestselling gay romance author. She writes love stories filled with heat and humour.
She lives in sunny England with her husband and two children, all of whom claim that they haven't had a proper conversation with her since she got her Kindle.
Lily has spent her life with her head full of daydreams, and decided one day to just sit down and start writing about them. In the process she discovered that she actually loved writing, because how else would she get to spend her time with hot and funny men?
She loves chocolate and Baileys and the best of all creations - Chocolate Baileys!
Lily Morton
EMAIL: lilymorton1@outlook.com
Dance on Ice by RJ Scott & VL Locey
Gideon by Lily Morton
