Game Misconduct: An MM Rivals to Lovers Hockey Romance

This is closer to a 3.5-star read for me. While the book ultimately ends on a high note, there were a few issues that made it harder for me to stay fully engaged throughout. First, some points felt repetitive. The internal rumination often went on longer than necessary, and I found myself wanting to skim entire paragraphs rather than sit with them. Instead of deepening the emotional impact, these moments sometimes slowed the pacing. Second, there were sentences that seemed designed to be cinematic, but ended up feeling confusing. At times, I had trouble discerning who was speaking, which pulled me out of the scene rather than immersing me in it. Lastly, I struggled a bit with character voice differentiation. Garcia and Sato occasionally sounded too similar to me. I can see this as a deliberate choice — reflecting a young man early in his career alongside an older man nearing retirement — but their internal monologues sometimes blurred together, making it harder to stay oriented.

It took a bit to get into the story, but once I got to know the characters, they took hold and I needed to know what happened to them! Theirs was a messy relationship, that probably never should have been, but they just couldn’t stay away from each other, and connected in their own unique way. Things are heavy for them, and it takes a bit for them to be truthful in any way, with themselves, or others. The way they work it all out, painful, but with a certain beauty that is just for them <3

GAME MISCONDUCT is the first in Ari Baran’s m/m hockey romance series. Michael Sato and Daniel Garcia fight every time they meet on the ice. It’s a bit of a surprise to themselves that off the ice? Their fiery energy eventually leads them to connect no less fiercely but with a slightly different outcome. Mike and Danny are physical opposites, on opposing teams, with Mike being the slightly built near rookie while Danny’s a tall, broad guy who is at the point where he’s beginning to consider