Wednesday, January 12, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: The Magic Between by Stephanie Hoyt

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on February 15, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.  

The Magic Between is a fantasy M-M romance novel by author Stephanie Hoyt, coming out of queer press Ninestar Press.  The book's description feels like it was pretty much targeted directly at me - it's a fantasy romance featuring not just a pop star as a protagonist, but more importantly....a hockey player (a goalie prospect).  Needless to say, it was an easy click once I saw this pop up on NetGalley, because my interests don't align like this in a book too often, outside minor things like a character from a Seanan McGuire novel popping up with a CWHL jersey.  That said, I worried that a lot of things could have gone wrong in featuring a M-M romance in hockey, which (like most pro sports although probably worse) is known to feature plenty of homophobia in the culture and locker rooms.

I needn't have worried, as The Magic Between is an absolutely charming romance story, featuring two Bi protagonists - one of which doesn't realize he's Bi at first but does not react poorly to the revelation - and handles the issues of homophobia in sports/hockey fairly well.  The romance is absolutely delightful, aided by both the fantasy backdrop in which pretty much everyone has some degree of magic and by the characters themselves - pop star with OCD/trauma issues AB and top NHL goalie prospect and NCAA goalie Matthew.  Both members of the couple deal with their doubts as they try and explore their love, a magical bond, and more, and the side characters who support them are lovely, even as they both deal with the awfulness of people on social media and in other places.  It's not the greatest romance I've read, and if you're looking for hot sex scenes you won't find it here, but if you're a hockey fan and a romance fan, or even just a fantasy romance fan, this will be very much up your alley.  

Trigger Warning: Homophobia, Biphobia.  

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
In a world like our own, except that everyone has some form of magic, there is a legend few believe in - the legend of Bonding.  It's a legend that one person's magic craves a specific other's magic - particularly that of someone with an "opposite" magic - to form a life-long special bond that is like nothing else.  

A.B. Cerise is an international pop star.  But A.B. has never been comfortable with aspects of his stardom, particularly the obsession of his fans with his love life, with his sexuality (he's Bi and proud of it), and with their speculations about his magic.  A.B.'s been burnt revealing the truth of his invisibility magic before - in one relationship gone horribly wrong - and as a result is terrified about "divulging" his magic to anyone, or about that magic accidentally triggering in front of the public....or even worse....dating.  

And then A.B. meets Matthew Hellman-Levoie, a gorgeous young man who causes A.B.'s magic to react, to cause him to go invisible....not that it matters because Matthew can still see him with his own magic, the magic of omnivision.  Matthew believes it's because the two of them are future Bondmates, which A.B. absolutely doesn't believe.  What he does believe is that he desperately wants Matthew, and that he'd like perhaps to spend time with him, terrifying as it is....but certainly not to date Matthew, who's of course totally straight.....right?

For Matthew, the meeting with A.B. seems to be fulfilling one of his dreams - of bonding being real and something he could find - but he never expected he'd find that reaction in another guy.  And yet, as Matthew gets to know A.B., he begins to wonder if that attraction he feels is something more, and if the world will allow him - the NHLs number one goalie prospect (and former #1 overall draft pick) - to openly find something in A.B.  

But the magic of bonds, and the magic of love may be too irresistible for either A.B. and Matthew to resist......
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The Magic Between is, as I stated before the jump, a combination of my interests, of fantasy, romance, and hockey, so of course I'm going to have a lot of opinions about this one.  I should note quickly that the hockey and sports in this world resembles our own, except that the names and certain teams are changed to not quite match the ones in our world (Matthew plays at Columbia, which doesn't have a D1 hockey team, the NHL teams mentioned all have names that are clearly derived from real NHL teams - Rangers to Raiders, Oilers to Miners, Hurricane to Storm, etc.).  Also, for those coming to this book from a hockey background, I should warn that this book isn't really interested in showing any actual hockey games, but rather in the struggles a top NHL prospect like Matthew - and presumably a future NHL player and maybe star - might have with a M-M relationship in a sport with severe issues with homophobia.  

Okay disclaimers out of the way, because now I need to start talking about why The Magic Between is so absolutely delightful.  Both Matthew and A.B. are incredibly likable characters, and the way they each approach their struggles surprised me at times but nearly always in a good way.  A.B. is an international pop star, but he has substantial anxiety about various aspects of his life despite that fame and fortune that makes him highly relatable - he's anxious about the idea of dating someone his one dating experience with another guy turned out to be a disaster (that guy was an ass), he's incredibly stressed by how his online and real life fans try to impose their own visions of his life upon him, particularly in how some of them refuse to accept that he's bi, not gay, and call one of his best friends a "beard", and because of all of that and more, he's incredibly afraid of divulging his Invisibility magic, which hasn't helped him ever learn to control it.  A.B. is a vortex of feelings and caring, and while he's getting therapy, and it helps, the feelings he gets when he meets gorgeous Matthew, who claims he wants to bond but in a platonic way, are just overwhelming.  

And then there's Matthew, supposedly straight hockey goalie, former #1 overall NHL Pick of the Edmonton Miners, and the latest in a legacy of hall of fame NHLers - but a boy who is far deeper than just some hockey jock.  Matthew likes hockey but its not everything to him and he'd wish people would see that (which is why he's spending 4 years post draft in college), whether it be his love of art, his fun with his friends and his twin (Maddie, with whom he shares a magical twin-sense), or his idealistic belief in bonds.  Matthew's reaction to magically reacting to AB is one of wonder as he first thinks it could result in that dream-bond, and as he discovers that those feelings for AB are more than platonic, he's not hung up over his sexuality crisis for long - really his real crisis is whether he'll be able to love AB openly while playing in the NHL.  

And their relationship is just so charming and adorable as they push and pull.  There's only one moment of sorta-heartbreak - the moment in nearly every romance story where something results in the characters being broken up and miserable until fate forces them to realize they belong together - and it doesn't last more than a chapter, as both characters know it's wrong from the moment it happens.  Instead this a story of two people who feel an attraction for each other near from the start, take some time to realize how deep that attraction goes, and are both very patient with the other in their wants and needs.  Even a late climactic moment of crisis is caused by one character panicking that their relationship has caused the other to endure something they previously never wanted, rather than anything selfish, and is resolved by the two realizing that what they have is far more in compensation than what they've lost.  AB is so willing to be patient and guiding to Matthew in Matthew's first M-M relationship (the book doesn't really contain any fully explicit scenes but it implies what happens well enough) and Matthew is so sweet that you just can't help wanting to eat them up.  The relationship is helped by all their family and friends being so incredibly supportive of their decisions, even as Matthew fears they'd be hostile - they're just totally accepting and it just makes you tear up and want to smile.  

And then there's the way the book takes on the serious issues surrounding their relationship, which is the hostility and ugliness of AB's fandom, especially online, and the ugly homophobia present in hockey and the fears of what that would do to Matthew in his attempt at an NHL career, is generally done very well.  While Matthew's friends and family are all accepting (his twin sister is already out, but as she notes to him, being out in women's hockey is easier since she wasn't the first, even if there' still very present homophobia there), he knows the sports world, and hockey in general, will not be.  And so Matthew coming out publicly (and with AB's popularity, there's no way of only being out in private) is a tough decision and challenge to manage.   

It's a very reasonable look at the situation, and it fits very well with what I know of the hockey world - Hoyt has done a really good job at portraying this.  Really the only weakness here is that the book basically ends just as Matthew's NHL career starts going, and ends on a happy note, whereas I would suspect that the homophobia issues would instead still be ongoing for him for quite a while - it basically accelerates the track of homophobia issues such that Matthew deals a lot with worrying about the potential consequences for much of the book, faces them near immediately upon coming out, and then moves forward after there, whereas I would think in real life everything would be a lot slower and more tortuous grind.  But well, this would have to be a longer book to deal with that, and everything else is so charming and the happy ending is so precious that well, I don't really care.  

So yeah, loved this one, scratching all my itches incredibly well.  
 

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