Tag: sarina bowen

Review

✍🏻 Professor Romance’s 4.5 ⭐️ Review: Sarina Bowen’s The New Guy ✍🏻

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Overall Grade: 4.5 ⭐️

Tropes: hockey romance; sports romance; neighbors turned lovers; hockey star and hockey trainer; mm romance

Sarina Bowen’s The New Guy is a fantastic addition to her Brooklyn Bruisers stories. Her newest book is satisfying as her characters, Hudson and Gavin, navigate professional sports life under the shadow of secrets. Bowen takes her time in drawing Hudson and Gavin together even though their chemistry is combustible from the moment they meet at the bar made famous throughout Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers/Brooklyn Hockey series. She carefully weaves in our favorite Brooklyn guys while introducing us to Gavin and Hudson, reminding us why we love these series so much. Even more, if she has the margin to write them, The New Guy provides a launching pad for a new series with a different hockey franchise. 

Through Gavin and Hudson’s stories, Bowen interrogates fear from the perspective of a widowed single father wanting something for himself while negotiating a new life in Brooklyn and a staid hockey player who has hidden his true self from the world, hoping to find a team who will keep him. This means The New Guy has Gavin and Hudson moving one step forward and three steps back for much of the book. While their attraction flies off the page, building any relationship between the two is fraught with lots of starts and stops. Bowen uses these spaces to develop more than their attraction as they learn about each other and themselves. She waxes poetic about facing and overcoming fears when she writes, “maybe there’s something holding you back, too. Maybe you’re dyslexic, or depressed or carrying around some burden I can’t see. Let me just tip you off that holding it in doesn’t make it go away. Please learn from my mistakes. The time and energy I’ve spent on my fear could have been put to better use…” Bowen reminds us that we stagnate if we don’t face our biggest challenges, and it becomes impossible to find an abundant life if we live in constant fear.

This truth, returning to past Brooklyn Bruisers players, and the sincerity, sweetness, and spiciness of Gavin and Hudson made for an engaging and entertaining read that made it impossible to put down.

In love and romance,

Professor A

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✍🏻 Ready to return to the world of Sarina Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers? The New Guy is LIVE and AVAILABLE NOW! Run and grab this one quick! ✍🏻

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A new male / male hockey romance from 24-time USA Today bestseller Sarina Bowen!

My name is Hudson Newgate, but my teammates call me New Guy.

That was my nickname in Chicago, too. And Vancouver. That’s what happens when you keep getting traded. Brooklyn is my last chance, especially after my poor performance last season.

But I can make this work. The new guy knows to keep his head down and shoot the puck. The new guy puts the game first.

What he doesn’t do is hook up with the other new guy—a hot athletic trainer who lives in my building. Gavin needs this job with my team. He’s a single dad with responsibilities.

We can’t be a couple. My arrogant agent–who’s also my father–will lose his mind if I’m dating a dude. And my team needs me to score goals, not whip up a media circus.

Too bad Gavin and I are terrible at resisting each other…

Grab it HERE ⬇️

Amazon: https://geni.us/New-Guy-Amzn
Apple Books: https://geni.us/New-Guy-Appl
Kobo: https://geni.us/New-Guy-Kobo
Nook: https://geni.us/New-Guy-BandN
Audio: https://geni.us/New-Guy-Audible

All links in one place: https://shor.by/NewGuy
ADD TO GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63355404-the-new-guy

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✍🏻 Professor Romance’s 4 ⭐️ Review: Sarina Bowen’s A Little Too Late, book 1 of the Madigan Mountain series ✍🏻

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Overall Grade: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Tropes: second chance romance; workplace romance; fractured family; adversaries-to-lovers

“It’s healthy to wreck an unfinished thing so you can start over and build something stronger. It’s not okay to break something just because it hurts to look at it. That’s what I did to us. I’ll always be sorry.” 

Reed and Ava, the first couple of the newest Madigan Mountain series, exemplify complicated. Sarina Bowen hits her readers hard with their second chance at romance, adversarial journey. Interestingly, this isn’t the only complicated relationship in the first book of this series, A Little Too Late. There are broken connections strewn throughout this book. Thankfully, this is a romance, so there is a guaranteed happy ending, but what is most compelling about this story is its focus on the reality of relationships: they may be fractured, but they needn’t remain that way. Most can be mended with care, tenacity, and a huge “I’m sorry.” Bowen deftly weaves this truth through her newest book. 

Here are the aspects of the book that made it a good read:

  1. After Ava and Reed’s break-up, Ava finds a family on Madigan Mountain. She compiles a group of strong, independent women to support her. This group of women provides a counterbalance to the re-emergence of Reed in her life. When the story grows heavy with the trials of their reconciliation, the reader can rest in the humor and wisdom provided by this group. 
  2. Reed’s journey is fairly typical of the overworking, ambitious MMC. He’s all work and little play (what little “play” he engages in is transactional at best). This means his journey will be the most profound, and this is true for Reed. I will say that, for me, Reed is my least favorite character in this story. There are a variety of reasons which I won’t post here to avoid spoilers, but I didn’t care much for him throughout most of the book. He redeems himself, but I wouldn’t say he’s a favorite Sarina Bowen MMC of mine. 
  3. While Reed, for me, isn’t a favorite character, Ava is. With that, though, is her book-long struggle to grow vulnerable again with Reed. If you’re looking for a quick fix for this couple, it takes most of the book for it. However, Ava is the impetus for any real change between these two. Even though she vacillates between hating and wanting Reed, her eventual openness with Reed becomes the impetus for his final change. Her forgiveness and willingness to move forward become their resolution, making her characterization much more interesting. 

Sarina Bowen’s A Little Too Late is a good emotional start to the Madigan Mountain series. Is it my favorite story from Sarina Bowen? No. Did it meet its purpose? I believe so. It provided the background necessary for the books coming from Rebecca Yarros and Devney Perry while also gifting us a complicated couple who reminds us that brokenness isn’t bad unless we don’t try to repair it.

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✍🏻 Ready for a new series from Sarina Bowen, Rebecca Yarros, and Devney Perry? Book 1 of the Madigan Mountain Series is here. Sarina Bowen’s A Little Too Late is LIVE right now! ✍🏻

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How to behave when the guy who broke your heart two thousand miles away turns up in your office:

One: Don’t drop your lucky coffee cup in shock, even though it’s been ten years.

Two: Don’t get defensive when he asks how you ended up working his family’s ski mountain… and why you kept it a secret.

Three: Give him the worst room in the resort. He deserves it for suddenly waltzing back in like he owns the place. (Which he kind of does.)

Four, five, six, seven, eight and nine: Do not kiss him in the hot tub.

Ten: Try to keep your heart intact after you break all of your rules.

Because Reed is leaving again. Hate can’t turn back into love. And it’s a little too late…

Grab your copy here!

All in one link page: https://shor.by/MadiganMtn

Amazon: https://geni.us/Little2LateAmazon

Apple Books: https://geni.us/Little2LateApple

Nook: https://geni.us/Little2LateNook

Kobo: https://geni.us/Little2LateKobo

Google: https://geni.us/Little2LateGoogle

Audio: https://geni.us/Little2LateAudio

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✍🏻 Have you missed Sarina Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers? Love Lessons is HERE, and Ian and Vera are EVERYTHING you LOVE about this series. ✍🏻

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Sarina Bowen’s Love Lessons is LIVE!

He needs an image makeover; she needs a mojo upgrade.

A new lessons-in-seduction hockey romance from Wall Street Journal bestselling author Sarina Bowen.

After I’m arrested for throwing a raucous party, my hockey team says I have an image problem. And I need to fix it, stat.

Charity work? Check. Haircut? Sure. But I draw the line at hiring my neighbor to style me. In the first place “style” shouldn’t be a verb. And I’m tired of people who’d judge me on appearances.

Vera and I don’t see eye to eye on anything. She wants me to try on clothes, while I just want to remove hers. She’s distractingly pretty, with soulful eyes and a sinful mouth that likes to argue with me.

But when management threatens my summer vacation, I grudgingly agree to Vera’s unusual proposal: she’ll give me an image makeover. But in return, she wants lessons in the art of seduction.

It sounds a little nutty, but I know a good opening when I hear it. Besides, it’s not like I’ll ever fall for her…

Cover Design: Hang Le
Cover Photo: Wander Aguiar Photography

Grab your copy here!

Amazon: https://geni.us/lovelessons-amazon
Apple Books: https://geni.us/lovelessons-apple
Kobo: https://geni.us/lovelessons-kobo
Nook: https://geni.us/lovelessons-nook
Google: https://geni.us/lovelessons-google
Audio: https://geni.us/lovelessons-audio

ADD TO GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60811919-love-lessons