Center Ice

PG, YA sports romance between sexually active teens

It is the summer before 16-year-old Karen Webber will become an 11th grader at a public high school in Corrigan Falls, a fictional, small, hockey-mad, Canadian town in Ontario, located along the shores of picturesque Lake Huron. After the recent death of her single mother in a car accident, as a minor, Karen could not stay on her own in their home in Toronto. She would have been placed in foster care if she had not been taken in by her biological father, Will Beacon. But residing with him entails also living with his wife, Natalie, and his three legitimate children, Miranda and Matt, twins who are almost 18 and will be entering 12th grade, and 14-year-old Sara, who will be in 9th grade in the fall.

Until the previous week, when Karen arrived in Corrigan Falls, Will had had nothing to do with her, other than paying child support, after having impregnated her mother—who was only 18 years old at the time, madly in love with him, and had no idea Will was a married man. Karen’s mother, a former professional dancer, was a kind, supportive, loving parent. Karen adored her, and is traumatized with grief due to her mother’s untimely death. In the short time she has been living with Will and his family, it has become evident to Karen that it was only at the instigation of Natalie that she has a place in her father’s home. But Karen is too resentful of Will to appreciate the saintly compassion of her stepmother, or the fact that Natalie, not Will, frequently steps in to mediate between Karen and Miranda, who is constantly sniping at Karen because she resents her as the living proof of her father’s infidelity to her mother. Fortunately, Matt is essentially neutral toward Karen, and Sara is a sweet girl, who goes out of her way to make friends with Karen. But the only thing that gives Karen any real relief from the unremitting agony of grief is running in the mornings in a nearby public park, with beautiful, tree-lined trails.

Tyler MacDonald is very close to turning 18 years old and, in the normal course of events, he would have graduated from high school at the end of the recent school year. But since he is a hockey star, at the advice of his coach, he has extended the time it will take him to graduate from four years to five years, due carrying a light load of classes the past two years in order to allow plenty of time for his hockey training and games. Tyler is about to begin his third year of experiencing the enormously competitive privilege of participating in one of only 20 teams in the Ontario Hockey League (two of which are located in Michigan, one in Pennsylvania, and the rest in Ontario). Each of these teams is connected to a public high school and a sports arena that seats thousands. The team at Corrigan Falls has a prestigious coach with over 30 years of experience in the OHL and a reputation for winning teams and high numbers of National Hockey League draft picks. All of this will be extremely helpful to Tyler’s achieving his goal of being drafted to the NHL less than a year from now. The NHL is the premier professional ice hockey league in the world, with 32 teams in total, 25 in the USA and 7 in Canada.

Tyler moved to Corrigan Falls just after he turned 16, prior to entering 11th grade. The majority of young men in the OHL have to leave their homes and families to move to the town containing the OHL team they have earned a place on. They board with willing hosts, who are typically major hockey fans, such as the family Tyler has been living with. Because hockey is such a huge deal in Canada, “puck bunnies” of all ages, including predatory adult women, don’t just throw themselves at adult NHL players, they also regularly seduce teenage OHL players. Tyler has been no exception among the young athletes who routinely fall prey to this sleazy process. From the moment he arrived in Corrigan Falls, up until about six months ago, when Tyler finally woke up to how destructive to his mental and physical health they are, excess booze at wild teen parties and promiscuous sex with aggressive females have been his primary sources of temporary relief from incessant stress. Stress that is primarily caused by the constant, demoralizing pressure put on him by his father and his agent, who are always criticizing and nagging him. They are both extremely greedy and shady, especially his father. As the story begins, they are disgustingly urging Tyler to start using steroids, and his father and his agent try to manipulate him into signing a loan for $200,000 floated by his agent, all of it paid to his shiftless father, as a blatant bribe to force Tyler to never sign with any other agent but his current creepy one.

In the midst of all these trials and tribulations, Karen and Tyler have a romantic Meet Cute in the park near Karen’s home, early one morning while both are running. A squirrel suddenly starts climbing up Karen’s leg, as if she were a tree, freaking her out, and Tyler helps her offload the pushy rodent. The two of them begin spending time together and, in addition to being drawn to each other due to a great deal of physical attraction, they discover that in each other’s company, they find a kind of peace, in which the overwhelming difficulties of their challenging life situations seem far less of a burden.

I was impressed with the fact that this author did not offer one of my least favorite YA romance themes, the “manwhore and the virgin.” Instead, she creates a really intriguing twist on that obnoxious, double-standard trope. Karen herself, though not remotely promiscuous, is not a virgin. And though Tyler has been promiscuous in the past, unlike all the other YA romances I’ve read with that type of hero, he is not reformed by falling for an innocent, unworldly heroine. Instead, he has already mended his ways before meeting Karen, who is not naïve. In addition, again, unlike all other “manwhore” teen plots, Karen does not overlook the destructive implications of Tyler’s former promiscuity. It is made clear that there is no such thing as any girl, especially a virgin, “knowing the score,” and accepting that sex with a promiscuous hockey player would be “one and done.” Tyler has inevitably hurt innocent girls who definitely hoped for a real relationship with him. In addition, Karen struggles with trusting a boy like Tyler, with a history of being drawn to constant sexual variety, to have the desire or capability of being monogamous. Especially with the example of her father before her, a man who, until the present day, has never been faithful throughout his marriage to poor Natalie. Karen rationally dreads the thought of becoming so hooked on Tyler, and so filled with misplaced loyalty, that she might allow Tyler to continually cheat on her in the way that Natalie has put up with Will’s eternal cheating on her.

Speaking of Natalie, above and beyond being a doormat to her faithless husband, as a mother, the woman is phenomenal. I really enjoyed how well she handles the conflict between Miranda and Karen, and also the tender, understanding way she mothers Karen.

I felt really bad for Tyler with such horrible, narcissistically selfish parents. But I confess I got rather impatient with his misplaced loyalty to them, especially his father. Far before it finally happened, I was anxiously awaiting the moment when, at long last the “worm would turn” and Tyler would stop putting up with his worthless father’s emotional abuse.

Having said all that, I thought the author did an excellent job seamlessly tying into the main romance plot the important family-drama subplots of both Tyler’s family and Karen’s family. In addition, because this book is the first in a series, the author provides an enjoyable extended epilogue of their relationship by having them show up as significant subcharacters in the other books in the series.

Parental Advisory: I personally would rate this book as PG. This novel is definitely a “mature” AKA “sex positive,” YA romance. Though their lovemaking isn’t graphically portrayed, it is made quite clear that Tyler and Karen have leaped into having intercourse very early in their relationship.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 4 stars
Hero: 4 stars
Subcharacters: 4 stars
Romance Plot: 4 stars
Family Drama Plots: 3.5 stars
Hockey Plot: 4 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Overall: 4 stars