Power Play is the latest in Cattherine Gayles's Portland Storm series. I can't say enough good things about this series. The stories are always full of raw emotions and deeply intense situations. The characters are real and smudged with the often harsh realities of life, not sugar coated to become some kind of plastic "ideal." Her characters are real, flawed and damaged just like we all are in some way.

This novel centers on Riley, a center for the Portland Storm. He is on his honeymoon... alone and without a wife.He's hurt and angry and definitely not in a great place in his personal life. And then he meets Mackenzie. Everything she thought she was about to have in her life has just been dashed into a thousand, heartbreaking pieces. She's lost and alone, figuratively AND literally.

Two damaged people in Cabo, both with more baggage than any single person should have to carry. But sometimes those moments are the ones that change everything. It is when we feel lost and shut off from the world that sometimes we find the one thing that can make all the difference.

Catherine writes some of the most beautiful characters I've ever read. They are beautiful because of their flaws, not despite of them. They are people that feel real, that pull at your heart as you read their stories. They are people that you can understand and fall in love with.  This book is one of my favorites of the story. The depth of pain within Mackenzie pulled at my soul, tore at it.  She made me feel so much and I loved that!

Such a fantastically emotional read!

Defensive Zone is the 10th full-length novel in the Portland Storm series, a series that has created an immense fan base of romance lovers and hockey fans!

This book focuses on Cody "Harry" Williams, a defenseman for the Portland Storm, and Dani Weber, the impetuous daughter of one of the coaches.  Dani has harbored a not so secret and not so subtle crush on Cody for a long time, much to the chagrin of her father.  After an incident last season, Coach Weber knows more about Cody than he wants to and has ordered Cody to stay away from his daughter.  But Dani isn't taking no for an answer.  She knows that there is more to Cody than his buttoned-up, bowtied facade and she is determined to find out what it is.  She calls him Dirty Harry, after all...!

One of my favorite things about this series, besides the hockey, is that they each have a very serious focus beyond the romance.  But this novel takes a bit of a different direction than most of the other books in the series.  Cody has a secret, one that he is not all comfortable sharing.  And that secret makes the theme of this novel acceptance without judgment.  At first, Dani's quest to find out what he's hiding is just about having fun, but then she realizes that there is a lot more to the ginger-haired hockey player than she realized and she jumps in head first.  And once she has decided that she wants something, she will not be stopped.

Through the first third to half of the book, I really just wanted to slap Dani.  She's young and she acted it.  She was extremely narrow in her vision, wanting what she wanted and to hell with anything that didn't further that goal.  She was dismissive of Cody's protests, almost scornful of his reasons for pushing her away.  Her attitude was beyond selfish and she annoyed me to no end.  But then things began to change when she finds out more about Cody and his family.  Then she grew up and became the woman she needed to be.

As I said, this book was very different from the others.  Less actual romance and a lot less hockey, but no less full of emotion and thought-provoking situations.  I love Catherine Gayle and I love that she keeps her readers guessing.

Smoke Signals is the second book in the Tulsa Thunderbirds series, a spinoff and companion series to Catherine Gayle's fantastic Portland Storm series. And like all of the books in these two series, this novel combines love, steamy romance, hockey, and real life issues that hit hard.

I love hockey and I love novels about hockey. And I have no small amount of love for the attention to detail that Catherine puts into the hockey aspects of the book, making it not only absorbing for long-time fans like myself, but putting in just enough explanation into her writing to make it easy for hockey noobs to understand, too. But as much as I love the hockey, it is the characters and their stories that really make the difference. The characters are so real, so well-developed, that you truly become connected to their stories.

This book revolves around Ray "Razor" Chambers, who we originally meet in the Portland Storms series. When he goes to Vegas for his best friend Bab's wedding to his long-time love Katie, he expects only to be there for that important day and to see old friends. What he doesn't expect is that is entire life will change. But change is what happens when he meets the gogeous Viktoriya Dubrovskya. Gorgeous, a porn star, and one of the most broken women he has ever met. And his only mission from that moment is to protect her and to help her, no matter what she or anyone else says about it.

Like all of these books, Smoke Signals is raw and emotional and Catherine doesn't shy away from real issues and real problems. This is probably one of the more graphic novels in the series and that is less about the steamy factor and more about the very real issues that Viktoriya goes through over the course of the story. I found it hard to read at moments, but that wasn't because of the book itself or how it was written. It was because it was just difficult to imagine the kind of hell that human beings can put each other through and the circumstances that put people into the positions they find themselves. The author has a knack for finding these issues and highlighting them through her characters in a way that may make you uncomfortable and emotionally raw, but also in ways that truly make you think.

My Recommendation

Great romance, great hockey, and a great story! It's emotional and at times uncomfortable to read, but it is a book that makes you think and see the world a little differently.

I truly love the Portland Storm books and I am never disappointed by them! The stories are beautifully written, with all of the romance you could ever want right along with deep, emotionally intense issues. And this one was so much more than romance,.. This is the story of a little girl who refused to accept that there was anything that she couldn't do. This is the story of a mother who would do anything for her daughters, even swallow her own fears. This is the story of a man with a heart that is bigger than most would assume.

This installment focuses on Bergy, one of the coaching staff, rather than one of the players. On the surface, he is a bit gruff, necessary as a coach of an NHL team. But there are things in his life that very few people know about and one of those things is is love for his sister Linnea, whoi has Down's Syndrome. When he meets Paige and her four daughters, he is taken with them all, but especially the youngest. Sophie is just 11 and she, too, has Down's. Paige has her hands full with four girls, all deeply in love with one of the Storm's players, Levi "501" Babcock. After winning tickets to a Storm event, Paige and her girls find their lives forever changed.

I honestly don't know just what or who I loved best in this book. There is no question that Bergy was more than a little bit of a silver fox. I don't know who was the physical inspiration for Catherine Gayle , but all I could see was Eric Dane. And I loved Paige and her dedication to her daughters, and theirs to her. And then there is Sophie, the little girl who was bound to do anything and everything. I truly loved that instead of coddling her, Paige swallowed her own fears to support her daughter. I also loved that Bergy and his friends did everything they could to make little Sophie's dreams come true.

These are the things that make these books so wonderful. The romance is always beautiful, yes. But I love that these books are so much more than that. There are real issues and those are really what make the books. The author doesn't shy away from presenting different aspects of life in a realistic way with no sugar coating it and I love that.

My Recommendation

I am an unabashed fan and I love this series! Definitely a must read for anyone who enjoys hockey, romance, and intense emotional reads!