Got this one off Netgalley. This is the third and final (I think) part of the Forever Friends trilogy by Howard Shapiro. The first book The Stereotypical Freaks was a fun read, that, despite its overly preachy sentimentality combined a sense of youthful innocence, camaraderie and music together with the woes of real life to make it likeable and memorable.
All that went down the drain with The Hockey Saint, a book that didn't know where it was going. It also introduced a new character who was uncharismatic and unsympathetic.
Watching Tom Leonard, our protagonist, grow from a happy young teen to a mature adult would have made for an excellent central plot, but far too much of the focus of the latter two books have been on other characters. Tom gets left in the lurch, developing a character arc through situations thrust on him, rather than through an actual narrative.
The art is clean, bordering on the unimaginative. This book suffers from drawing its female characters poorly. There are very few, and they might as well be carbon copies of each other - I mean, Felicity and Jaelithe would be impossible to tell apart if not for the hair colour. And there's some bordering-on-DC Comics-bad proportions in this book for some of the characters from time to time as well. Why can't female characters be drawn with some diversity in race, size, features and characteristics? Why is that always the problem?
I don't like the Jake character. Didn't like him much in book 2, and he's no more likeable in book 3. He comes across as an overly aggressive, self-involved individual who reels people in with his charm and then throws them under the bus. I get that nearing retirement age, especially due to an injury, is a frustrating and frightening experience for a sportsperson, yet he has a support system that would rally around him if he wasn't such a d-bag about everything and didn't always push everyone away. And lest we forget, this guy is written as being overly aggressive on the pitch, which is an added negative.
I didn't care about Jake and couldn't make myself feel sorry for him. He acted the same way in book 2, and to have the character not change at all, despite a decade going by, was poor writing.
I'm disappointed in Felicity's characterisation. I had to go back and check this was the same character from book 2. Felicity is Jake's manager and girlfriend in book 2, yet in this book she's nothing but the housewife and mum-of-two who just nags Jake for not being around for his kids. Ummm... How exactly did the two of them think this was going to work out? Shouldn't they have had a conversation about how during hockey season, Jake won't be able to go to daddy-daughter school day? Or that, you know, it's actually really boring for some women to stay home all day, so maybe, plan things so that you have kids only when both of you are able to swap and spend time with them? Is that so hard? She comes across as the quintessential shrew that authors like writing. It makes no sense.
Tom is another nag. I couldn't figure out what his job is or his connection with Jake. He has no role, no life - he appears to only ever be working out with Jake at the rink, not sure why. Is he supposed to be part of the team, because I didn't see him playing during the matches. He spends the entire book complaining about Jake not supporting him on his mysterious project. He reconnects with old friends, ostensibly to get them involved in the project as well, but we find this out only at the end of the book.
His reconnecting with Jaelithe was also pretty random. I'm disappointed that she's written as someone who is not even thirty, but already has a 8 or 9 year old child. It's almost trope-y how she made a mistake in her youth that ended with her being a single mom. At least she doesn't wallow in it, and is content with her success as a journalist.
A wonderful addition to this book was the introduction of a female coach for a pro hockey men's team. It is a significant subject and the book does deal with the novelty of the idea, if not the actual execution of such a difficult job. Coach Schell, for the little screen time she's given, is a heavy weight who doesn't back down. I would have expected, logically, for her to be drawn as a tougher, athletic and older person, but she's drawn to look seriously young and attractive.
The book is on the periphery of passing the Bechdel–Wallace test with the female characters getting something of an arc and with Jaelithe and Schell talking about her coaching without bringing in romance or her male team. I don't think it passed the test, but it got close.
The problem of music recommendations in a hockey book crops up here again. This story started with 'the Battle of the Bands', yet it's ended up being more sports-focused. I'm not bothered by the fact that there is a huge focus on ice hockey, a sport I know nothing about; it's easy to get excited by sports and understand the stakes, even if some of the technicalities pass you by. But, it doesn't fit with where we started; or where the protagonist Tom started.
Also, for a series subtitled 'Forever Friends' the friends from book 1 play no role in Tom's life. You'd think they'd have turned up, no matter where they were, when significant things happened in his life, and vice versa, but nope. The only Forever Friend we get to meet is Jake, who you'd rather dumb than keep, in my opinion.
This book tries to be as mature as its aged-up character, which works most of the time. There aren't that many neat bows tied up, yet people don't turn into hysterical maniacs when things don't work out the way they expected.
This book is a good effort, but too far removed from its initial story to seem like a fitting conclusion.
Hockey Karma by Howard Shapiro
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