Understatement of the Year by Sarina BowenI’ve reading Sarina Bowen’s The Understatement of the Year for a couple months now. I’ve been enjoying it, I just wasn’t devoting enough time to reading. I blazed through the book this week and must shout its praises from the rooftops.

Check out this blurb, which is the first thing that sold me:

What happened in high school stayed in high school. Until now.

Five years ago, Michael Graham betrayed the only person who ever really knew him. Since then, he’s made an art of hiding his sexual orientation from everyone. Including himself.

So it’s a shock when his past strolls right into the Harkness College locker room, sporting a bag of hockey gear and the same slow smile that had always rendered Graham defenseless.

For Graham, there is only one possible reaction: total, debilitating panic. With one loose word, the team’s new left wing could destroy Graham’s life as he knows it.

John Rikker is stuck being the new guy. Again. And it’s worse than usual, because the media has latched onto the story of the only “out” player in Division One hockey. As the satellite trucks line the sidewalk outside the rink, his new teammates are not amused.

And one player in particular looks sick every time he enters the room.

Rikker didn’t exactly expect a warm welcome from Graham. But the guy won’t even meet his eyes. From the looks of it, his former… best friend / boyfriend / whatever isn’t doing so well. He drinks too much and can’t focus during practice.

Either the two loneliest guys on the team will self destruct from all the new pressures in their lives, or they can navigate the pain to find a way back to one another. To say that it won’t be easy is the Understatement of the Year.

Warning: unlike the other books in this series, this heartbreaking love story is about two guys. Contains sexual situations, dance music, snarky t-shirts and a poker-playing grandmother.

I can’t recoommend this book enough. For those who’ve read and enjoyed Hat Trick, I think you’ll also be as into this book as I was. I’ll be doing a full review, along with an interview with Sarina, for PuckBuddys.com soon, but I didn’t want to waste time putting out there how much I liked this book.

Check out Sarina’s website for more details and buy links for all the major online sites.