Narrated by Iggy Toma & Tim Paige
Headstrong is book three in Vino & Veritas, a queer contemporary series written by various authors in Sarina Bowen’s True North World and set in and around the bookstore/bar Vino & Veritas.
Rainn Richardson is a former hockey player, scouted to play for the NHL in his senior year in college but injury put paid to that dream. It’s been four years since then and he’s stuck. He was only a semester away from graduating with a degree in sports management, but he doesn’t believe there’s much point to that career now and hasn’t been back. He’s been working at Vino & Veritas in the bookshop and as the book begins, picks up some extra shifts in the bar to supplement his meagre income.
Rainn’s family is in Rhode Island but he’s basically cut them out of his life. He’s not dealing with the loss of his dream career. Hockey was everything to him and without it he doesn’t know who he is.
Leighton “Whit” Whittaker is an openly gay hockey player for Moo U in Burlington. He’s in his senior year of college studying farm management. While he’s good at and loves hockey, his dream is to run the family farm with his older brother, Campbell.
When Whit runs into Rainn in the bookstore, Rainn is virtually triggered by Whit. Just seeing someone who plays hockey, who goes to college, who has it all ahead of him, is tough for him. But Whit is like a big puppy dog in some ways and Rainn can’t find it in him to turn away his overtures of friendship.
Whit has only recently come out and he’s a big ole’ virgin. He’s hoping to “punch his v-card” by his 22nd birthday which is only a few weeks away. But he has zero game. Nada. Zilch.
So he asks Rainn to be his wingman. Even though Rainn is straight. Or… is he?
Whit has a crush on Rainn almost from the beginning. Both from a hockey perspective (Rainn is a local legend) as well as from the romantic one. But he tries to hide it and move on as Rainn is very clear that he’s straight. He’s not homophobic or anything but he’s never been interested in guys before and has always been decidedly heterosexual.
But as they start hanging out together, Rainn starts to wonder if maybe there isn’t something else going on between them than just friendship.
At first I thought the story was going to be about Rainn coming to the understanding of his bisexuality and perhaps the conflict was going to be about whether he would come out or be closeted. But actually, Rainn accepts it remarkably easily and is, from the start, open about his relationship with Whit, once it begins.
The conflict is more about Rainn’s fear of failure and further disappointment and as a result his reluctance to make plans or commit to anything – and that includes Whit. But it took a long time for that to be clear to me. The story didn’t go where I was expecting.
I wasn’t entirely convinced by the ease Rainn accepted his bisexuality. There was no questioning or discomfort or reluctance to come out at all. Not that it’s a bad thing at all for a character to just be okay with being queer – that’s fantastic. But, given the set up and the very strong emphasis on Rainn’s straightness, it felt really unusual for it not to be a source of conflict.
Whit does have his own story arc in the book too but the biggest growth comes from Rainn. He hasn’t coped with the fallout of his injury. Sometimes grief takes time to work out and there are some who never are able to move on. He did feel sorry for himself but mostly it was himself he was punishing rather than being mopey and “woe is me” to everyone else, if that makes sense. I did find myself getting a little impatient with him from time to time but only a little. I’m sure Iggy Toma’s sympathetic portrayal had something to do with that.
There is a lot of emphasis on the whole virgin thing. And of course because Rainn has never had gay sex before, they are both experiencing firsts all the way through their relationship. There’s also a lot of sex. I found it a little too much at times. Maybe I’m getting old!
The narration was very good. Iggy Toma is a narrator I tend to hear performing older characters rather than ones in their mid-twenties so I had to make some mental adjustment, but I can’t fault his work. Tim Paige has a younger sounding voice which fit with Whit’s youth (even though his EQ and general maturity is far higher than Rainn’s) but I found his pacing a little fast. Because of the dual narration it wasn’t an option to slow the listen down to 0.9x which probably would have worked for Mr. Paige – it would have meant Mr. Toma was too slow.
I enjoyed the epilogue of Headstrong a lot – there was a delightful humour it. I wish there had been a little more during the book, but I guess that wasn’t the story. Rainn wasn’t happy so fun wasn’t really a thing he had much of until he fell in love with Whit and moved forward with his life.
I liked that by the end of the book, Rainn recognised his bisexuality wasn’t restricted only to Whit – he has a “type”, it’s just very specific.
Headstrong was an enjoyable listen, boosted by strong narration but it wasn’t my favourite in the series.
Kaetrin
Buy Headstrong by Eden Finley on Amazon
I liked this one, too, for pretty much the same reasons :) The V&V series has been a bit mixed IMO – I haven’t read any of the more recent ones yet – and maybe not surprisingly, the books from the more well-known authors have generally worked better for me than many of those by the lesser-known ones.
I haven’t read all that many of them yet. So many books. So little time! :)
Ain’t that the truth…?
I read this in print and gave it a B- as well. Fun to read but not outstanding. Given the narrators, I know it would probably be stronger as an audiobook. I thought Rainn’s acceptance of his bisexuality was too easy, as well. When I read this I hadn’t read anything except a short story by Finley, but I’ve now read most of the Fake Boyfriend series and find her a reliable author for fairly low-angst, enjoyable reads.
oh – good to know!