Review: Caught Off Guard by Catherine Cloud

Matthias Brandl always knew he wouldn’t spend his entire career with the same team. He does have two tiny problems with getting traded to Las Vegas, though. Number one: Matthias hooked up with their starting goalie Casey Wallace last summer. Number two: Casey totally hates his guts.
Now that Matthias has to be Casey’s backup whether he likes it or not, they have to find a way to work together. That’s when a third tiny problem appears: The more time they spend together, the more Matthias is drawn to Casey. If Matthias wants to help his team win the Cup, he can’t get distracted – but there’s nothing as distracting as Casey.
Review:
Dear Catherine Cloud,
I never heard of your works, but Ay, one of my Good Reads book buddies recommended this book to me as “good and proper hockey romance” and I ended up enjoying it so much.   This is indeed a *hockey* romance as in there are a lot of actual hockey games shown and in fact there is probably way more hockey in this book than Romance.  Please note that, this is not a criticism from me, but if you are not okay with a lot of games being described I do think you should skip this book.  For me, it was great, I may not have watched a real hockey game for decades, but I watched a lot when I was young and do enjoy reading a book which features the games if it is incorporated in the narrative well.
But a lot of the readers will probably want to know more about the romance storyline before deciding whether to pick the book up.  I think the romance storyline was a little unusual, because at the end of the book Matthias and Casey are going on their first date. Actually I think the date which is featured in the last chapter is a second or third, but still you get the drift – in a sense their love story is just beginning when the book ends. I however strongly disagree with a couple of reviews I read which argue that the book has pacing problems because of that. Because you see, I thought that the romance was developing if not from the very first time they met, then very soon after that.
Matthias narrates the book, and a lot of his narration is done in the third person present time which is normally not my favorite POV (I usually prefer third person past or first person past), but here it worked well for me. I also thought that at first the style was a little too conversational, but again, very early in the book I decided that this works well for the characters. I do recommend getting a sample to see if a style works for you, I can see some readers deciding that solely based on writing the book is not for them.
Personally I loved Matthias’ voice, I thought he was a great narrator, a little self deprecating and funny too. I thought we could see Casey through his eyes too and that is not always the case for me when the story is narrated by one half of the couple and we are never in the head of the other man. As I wrote above, despite their romance officially starting at the end of the book so to speak, I thought the author made it very very clear just how attracted both of them became to each other on all the levels possible. I thought through Matthias she conveyed just how much chemistry they had. I found it really lovely.
Oh, and no, Casey does not hate Matthias’ guts!  He may have been grumpy to him at the beginning when Matthias got traded to their team, but no, NO there is no hate I promise you :).
I also really liked some secondary characters. Not all of the guys on the team get enough page space for obvious reasons, but I thought Oliver was adorable for example. I liked how the author handled other players knowing/ not knowing about gay/bi players sexuality. I get that it is still very hard for well known players to come out, but to me it makes more sense when at least couple people on the team know and support them, if it is too much of leap of faith to trust the whole team.
B+
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