ARC Review: Gravity by Tal Bauer

Gravity by Tal Bauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4 stars

This review has spoilers!

Okay look I love Tal Bauer's particular brand of schmaltz and I love how over the top everything is and this book hit the dramatiques big time. The extreme Tal Bauer-ness of Gravity was kind of a lot honestly.

1. The hockey!
I am a big hockey fan and my team has made several deep playoff runs in a row so I am deeply familiar with the sport. Tal's hockey was fairly technically accurate albeit improbable at points. The stuff that was wrong can be excused as narrative decisions. The brutality of the last quarter of the book is where it gets a bit, um, wtf for me. Bryce (one of the main characters) blocks a puck with his NECK and bleeds everywhere and has to get major surgeries during the playoff run and recovers enough to play in the Stanley cup final game 7 approximately 6 weeks later. So, yes, players do return after major surgery in the playoffs etc but holy crap Tal did you have to go for his neck??? The brutality continues with the description of everyone's injuries during the playoffs and I am not exaggerating here. I appreciated it, really, because playoffs are rough. So content warning starting about 70% stuff gets bloody.

2. The French!
The statement at the beginning of the book says to look up the French translations for yourself. Respect to Tal for making the reader work for the book. Most of the French is translated within the dialogue or internal monologues already though so it isn't difficult to read if you don't know French and don't bother to translate anything.

3. The romance!
In typical Tal fashion the romance is intense and poetic from the start. One of the main characters (Bryce) even has several songs he sings in the book. Tal, please, this is a hockey book I thought I was safe from song lyrics. What I absolutely loved about the romantic arc is the emotional conflict was resolved fairly early in the book, there was no 80% breakup, and there wasn't any homophobic crisis when they outed themselves. They won the Stanley Cup of love isn't that sweet?

4. The plot!
There wasn't much of one really. Hockey vibes, romance vibes, horrific injury vibes. This book has all the vibes. Too many vibes, really. I didn't think it was possible but this book was almost Too Much Tal Bauer-ness for me. Thus the 4 star rating. Tone it down, man, I'm just here for some hockey and kissing.

I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

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