TWO LEFT FEET, gay Premier League football...soccer in the US...version of the trendy gay romance series we all love

TWO LEFT FEET
KALLIE EMBLIDGE
Dell Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A Premier League football star must defend his roster spot—and his heart—when a threateningly talented and handsome midfielder joins his team in this utterly charming debut romance, a profound love letter to the world’s most popular sport.

Oliver Harris is football royalty in London. Ordinarily the star of the Camden Roses is calm, cool, and collected, keeping his club relevant with his prowess in the midfield and mighty left foot. But this season, the threats There’s Camden’s management to contend with—complete with a new, prickly Dutch coach, eager for better results—and a mid-season injury, which sidelines him when his team needs him most. When a recruit is called up to fill in, Oliver fears he’ll be replaced. If he can mentor this younger talent, then they might just have a chance at winning, together.

After a string of lackluster performances in his native Spain, Leonardo Davis-Villanueva is looking for one last shot at the club he always dreamed of, where he once played in the youth academy. Oliver immediately finds confident, eager Leo irritating. He can barely go through the motions, let alone coach him, without outright hostility. When he comes to admire Leo’s skill and warms to his humor and energy, though, he begins to see Leo as a friend—and then, to his mounting horror, as something more.

Leo craves Oliver’s attention and partnership; Oliver can’t afford to fall in love with his teammate. He’s always kept a tight lid on his sexuality in a league that’s never had a player come out. As the season heats up, a lot more than football hangs in the balance. Can Oliver—and Leo—win when it counts most?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oliver, our MC, is a shitty guy: self-obsessed, entirely focused on what's happened *to* him in his life; he's basically a straight man. Except he really wants sex with other guys. Like lots of straight victimvictimvictim men I've known, he thinks he ought to be able to do what he wants to who he wants and be left alone about it. There I agree with him, within consensual boundaries. He's got thhe social awareness to stay on the DL in the Premier League. It's as homophobic a culture as the NHL of Heated Rivalry (in)fame.

So meeting Leo, a hottie with skills equal to his own before his playing career temporarily ended in injury, and slowly, reluctantly falling in love with him follows the grumpy/sunshine, enemies-to-lovers trope nexus. Leo is boundlessly enthusiastic, willing to get in the big fat middle of anything because he's sure it will come out right. As Oliver moves from injured mentor to teammate and partner in an amazing player collaboration with Leo, he realizes he's never been so happy, the team's come out of their scoring slump, and if this beautiful amazing man will have him he wants to be the partner he deserves.

All at once we're in the press-conference-having, coming-out-to-mom part of the story. After the first third-plus of having to put up with his B.S. of pity-poor-me he's healed by Luuuv. Then...finis.

This is a debut novel or I'd have the marshmallow fork out and the logs a-flamin'. I'm going with three stars for what feels like the usual rookie error of not giving the reader intimacy building between the men...even the sex scenes were, well, infrequent and lacking urgency...and an extra half-star for realizing there's a gap in the market that can be filled with a bit of effort. I'd like to see this further honed, fined down into a dart to pierce my wall of ignorance about football; the author doesn't demonstrate a lot of knowledge I can't glean from Wikipedia. I'd call it a competent job of work that could, if seriously expanded on, become a series I'd read.

At the very least it would need to give me more connection and interconnection between the guys, even if it does slow-burn as slowly as this story does; less inner-gaze tediousness..nothing gets resolved until everything gets resolved all at once!...and more of the men exploring their borning connection.

Not for football addicts.

IRON HOPE: Lessons Learned from Conquering the Impossible, focus on the lessons not the why of them and it's inspiring

IRON HOPE: Lessons Learned from Conquering the Impossible
JAMES LAWRENCE
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$15.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The ultimate guide to mental toughness by James 'Iron Cowboy' Lawrence – the greatest endurance athlete in human history.

Lawrence’s accomplishments are nearly impossible to comprehend. In 2015, he set a Guinness World Record record by completing 50 full-distance triathlons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days. Yes, THE Ironman, 'the single most difficult day in sports'—a 2.4-mile swim, 112 miles on a bike, then a 26.2-mile run, all completed in under 17 hours. It is a race so intense that less than .01% of the population have completed one.

Afterwards, Lawrence subjected his body to exhaustive physical testing, to every genetic test known to science. The stunning discovery is that physically, James Lawrence is unspecial in every way. The secret to his bulletproof body is his bulletproof mentality.

How does a person develop the mental fortitude necessary to overcome incredible exhaustion, immeasurable suffering, and unfathomable pain in order to achieve impossible goals? With Iron Hope, that’s exactly what James 'Iron Cowboy' Lawrence shows readers how to do. Lawrence explains how readers can forge an iron will by making and keeping small promises to themselves again and again, amassing experience and building momentum until giving up becomes impossible. Combine a big dream with small improvements repeated with great consistency and make your goals and dreams a reality.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read this because I am unable to fathom WHY anyone would do this insane thing to their body.

I still don't know.

What I *do* know is that doing this insane thing to his body afforded Author Lawrence great clarity about how he accomplished this absurd, OTT feat of effortful activity. He reports to readers the means by which he accomplished a feat of endurance and self-discipline that a vanishingly small number of us fellow humans ever even attempt, let alone accomplish.

There is huge value in absorbing this attitude: "do it to prove you can." Do hard things because they are hard, and along the way build the habits of mind that will make you unstoppable in areas that actually matter.

*oops* I didn't mean to type that out loud.

There it is, though. What earthly use is doing this to one's body? This smacks of the religious ascetics who do appalling things to themselves because god. In what way is this necessary, or beneficial to the world? As an example to emulate? I'd drag anyone I know to the shrink if they announced they'd got this idea for abusing their body in this way.

However much I decry the wasteful, expensive thing this lunacy promotes...that training costs, the supplements and dietary demands cost like crazy, donate the time and money to bettering the world you selfish thing!...I acknowledge the author's using the platform it gives him to have accomplished this as a means to offer practical, actionable advice on how to acquire the *habits* that got him there. He's offering good information, clearly and understandably formatted, explaining how and why this or that effort pays off in self-discipline; this is the thing I focused on, not the reason *he* was doing it but rather *how* he did what he did.

I devoutly hope the readers the book will get because the author did what he did will put his path to attaining an enviable strength of mind to more useful ends. It's the egotism, the selfish "MY victory" straight-male vanity of the exercise (!) that won't let me get to a full four stars despite the more positive uses the information can be put to.

HOME, AWAY by Jeff Gillenkirk is a four-1/2 star corrective to the woman's point-of-view divorce novel

HOME, AWAY
JEFF GILLENKIRK
Broken Levee Books
$15.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: How much is a father's love worth? Jason Thibodeaux has a $42 million contract to pitch for the Colorado Rockies and a romantic bachelor lifestyle when the son he lost in a searing custody battle reappears in his life. Home, Away follows Thibodeaux's colorful rise to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball and his agonized decision to quit in the prime of his career to care for his troubled son. Their evolving relationship and resulting confrontations—on the baseball field and off—test the limits of loyalty and the meaning of fatherhood itself.

My Review: I won this book in a LibraryThing giveaway in 2010. I was in a very raw and emotionally vulnerable state vis-a-vis relationships, marriage, parenthood, etc., so my review written at the time reflects that:

It's taken me *weeks* to calm down enough to write a review of this book that didn't amount to a woman-hating scream of fury at the stupidity and unfairness of a court system and a culture that privileges mothers to the exclusion of fathers.

So I don't intend to say a single word about that hugely important part of this novel. I can't be objective in the least on the topic. I limit myself to the broad observation that this is a much needed corrective to the man-bad, woman-good writing that infests family fiction like maggots infest a dead cat.

I can tell you that novels about baseball are seldom so deeply satisfying...a man who pursues his dream to become a major league pitcher, gives it up several times to be a father to his son, screws *everything* up and crawls into a bottle to stop the hurting, and then, and then—well, then a dream beyond dreaming comes true, and it's so wonderfully imagined and so movingly presented that I read the ending three times and cried each one of them.

I doubt a large number of women will read this book because it's so very honest about them, and who wants to read about *that*, right? And it's got LOTS of baseball in it. That's too bad, really. But it is what it is. I am very, very glad Mr. Gillenkirk wrote this book. I truly treasured it. I hope other divorced men, baseball fans, and frustrated fathers will find it.

So that's a quick take on me, my feelings and frustrations, and my misogyny six years ago.

What makes me happiest about this somewhat tough read, due to its subject matter, is that it is the first book I received from Chin Music Press and, in fact, was the first moment I was aware the press existed. I was delighted by the immediate and apologetic way in which the press's representative, David Jacobson, handled a minor issue I had with my first copy's quality: Instantaneous apology and replacement with even more helpings of mea-culpa soothing my ruffled feathers.

No one does that for a nobody reviewer over a truly tiny complaint (pages bound and trimmed oddly, a coffee stain on the front over). I was impressed, I made it my business to poke around their website, and decided I'd order some other books to see what they were up to. I ordered two novels, BUDDY ZOOKA IN THE FRENCH QUARTER AND BEYOND and LAST OF THE RED-HOT POPPAS; and a ghost story, BIG IN JAPAN. All three of these were enjoyable reads, getting three and a half to as much as four stars. (Reviews ill appear when my ancient hard drive renders up its secrets at last.)

Be sure of this: A book with the Chin Music Press logo is a book worthy of your attention, and most probably will, given that attention, become your own for its sheer irresistibility.