Tigers & Devils by Sean Kennedy

This is Book 32 started, book 27 finished

Tigers & Devils by Sean Kennedy
Published by Dreamspinner Press, 2012

This book was given to me to read in one of my Goodreads clubs.  I've looked at this one over and over for the past couple years but never picked it up; it just looked like some dumb sports jock gay romance and that didn't do much for me.   Well, I read it and I should have read it a long time ago.  This is just a highly entertaining book.

It gets extra points for being Australian – so unfamiliar slang and English spelled the way everyone but Americans do it for increased charm.  The main protagonist, Simon, isn’t himself a jock, he’s just a football fan who runs into a star player from an opposing team and they start to date.  At first, he’s actually rude to Declan, thinking him nothing more than a drunk jock closet-case.  The rest of the story unfolds from there.

In a way, this book really does have the standard romance formula: Simon meets Declan.  They fall in love.  They overcome adversity to stay together but a simple misunderstanding causes them to almost break up.  They sort it out.  The End.    The difference is in the way the story is put together.  It doesn't feel at all like a romance at all.   While the two have sex, there isn’t a play by play included.  The book is more concerned with the mechanics of professional sports, the impact of gay players on the game, other players, the fans and a gay man fitting in with the players’ WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends).  Simon is the Director for a local Melbourne film festival and a side story is this non-profit and the use of Declan’s celebrity by the festival’s board to increase media coverage.

Much of the story is about celebrity, expectations and how people treat celebrities and their partners.  There are awestruck family members, other celebrity athletes who turn out to be people, opinionated fans, the media and management types who ‘manage’ things.

There’s a lot going on in this book.  It’s a romance but not a romance.  It’s a sports book but not a sports book.  I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would at first.  I immediately went out and bought the sequel.

4 stars.