Rating: 5 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel

Morgan is a veteran NHL player. He’s been in the league for over a decade and his stats are solid, but not impressive. He does his job for his team, but he doesn’t make a big splash, and Morgan is fine with that. He’s content to play the game he loves until retirement. Until Morgan gets traded to the Rocky Mountain Outlaws—also known as the worst team in the league. No one pays much attention to the Outlaws, but something is going on there and none of it is good.

Now, Morgan is asked to lead the team and he thinks that is the worst idea ever. Morgan doesn’t get involved and he certainly isn’t prepared to rally a group of rookies and spiraling veterans that have been through some stuff. But this is a special group of men and, when Morgan meets Shea, he’s blown away by the young player.

Now, Shea is Morgan’s co-captain and Morgan needs to put Shea off limits and out of bounds. There is absolutely no way that Morgan will ever be good enough for someone as special as Shea. But the men get each other on so many levels and it’s impossible to stay away from each other. Morgan is going to make sure that he earns the right to be with Shea…forever. The team is bonded and these men all deserve the wins. From a found family to a forever love, this is their story.

What I find so interesting about books from Tal Bauer is that the author has different styles to his writing. He has intense action books where you expect tension, and then there is a book like The Rest of the Story. The book is told entirely from Morgan’s first-person POV and Morgan has much more to say then even he thought.

Morgan gets traded to the Outlaws and, before he even gets there, he is counting down the days until he can leave. He wants to be anywhere else on any other team. But what Morgan finds at the Outlaws is way more than he imagined and way more than he thought he was prepared to deal with, but Morgan rises to challenge after challenge. What was going on at the Outlaws is the foundation of the story and there were parts that I wondered how it would play out in the real world, but I had to settle on accepting it for the story as a whole.

There is an intense hockey story here and an intense love story. Morgan and Shea fall deep and hard and forever. At first glance, their story is a slow burn, but their story is also emotional and wordy and descriptive and, while a few times I was ready for their story to move along a bit faster, at some point I realized the pace was perfect. Shea is a Harvard graduate with a life the complete opposite of Morgan’s, but their dreams to play in the NHL are the same. Shea chooses Morgan at their first meeting, almost at the same moment that Morgan chooses Shea, and Morgan is so in awe of Shea that he vows to be the best person he can possibly be to earn Shea’s love, but Shea already sees all the good in Morgan.

This book takes place in the same universe as Gravity, and Bryce has a cameo, but the story does fully stand on its own, There is also a darker side to this story that is intricately woven in. The team all becomes a family and they all became real and life-like characters to me that were difficult to leave at the end. If you like this book, at some point while reading you will begin to hold your breath and that is where the magic of the story lives. It’s a love story, a story of friendship, a story of a forever found family, and a story you should definitely add to your reading list.