Scoreless Game

On the Board, Book 2

By: Anna Zabo, L.A. Witt

Narrated by: Michael Ferraiuolo

At nearly 31-years-old, Pittsburgh Griffins captain Elias Karlsson’s hockey years are numbered. Everything is changing around him, including his 11-year friendship with Nikolai Sidorov. Elias would give anything for Nisha to be a permanent part of his life, but their once bedrock-strong bond has broken into a million pieces, and Elias doesn’t know why. More than anything, Elias wants his friend back, but if that isn’t an option, maybe it’s time for him to look outside of hockey for someone to be there with him when hockey isn’t an option anymore.

Nisha’s world is splintering apart. He’s been in love with his two best friends for years, but now one of them has someone. The other, Elias, is searching for everything Nisha wishes he could give him, but he’s looking for it in anyone but Nisha. The farther his friends slip away, the deeper the loneliness sinks in, and the bleaker his empty future looks. What can he do but numb the pain in the only ways he knows how?

On the eve of the season opener, Nisha’s unexplained absence threatens the cohesion of the team, putting him and Elias on a collision course of strong wills, broken hearts, and shattered trust. In the end, they may lose the very thing that matters most to them both: each other.

Scoreless Game, the asexual-pansexual romance, is book two in the On the Board series.

CW: Struggles with alcoholism and binge-drinking, suicidal ideation, toxic family dynamics, and acephobia.

©2023 Anna Zabo & L.A. Witt (P)2023 Anna Zabo & L.A. Witt

Amazing

What a beautiful story and performance. This was one that breaks your heart and then puts all the pieces back together at the end. Beautiful all around: writing, story flow and narration were perfect. Thank you Anna Zabo, L.A. Witt and Michael Ferraiuolo for another masterpiece!

Hockey, connection, and accents!

Amazing! Friends to lovers is a great trope but this goes to the next level!! While this book has some angst that's internal and external it wasn't overpowering- there was a great mix of hockey action, friendship, chirping and smexy times! I really enjoyed feeling Elias and Nikki's connection as friends and the transition to lovers. The narration is on point with great accents too! A plus is that Landry and Isaac are in this book too cuz they are so great together!

A valiant effort

Both of these authors are in my top five. I eagerly await their new releases, and i have reread most of their books. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, and was eagerly anticipating this release. Unfortunately, even with all that I can’t quite bring myself to give a five star review.

First, here’s what was good. Don’t let the length put you off. The story develops well across the entirety of the text, with time and attention given to both internal character growth and external story events. The book spans several months in the lives of the main characters, and so the length makes sense. There are moments of humor, moments of heartache, and moments of sweetness, all of which kept me engaged and not feeling like things were dragging.

Also, Michael Farraiuolo is an amazing narrator. He could literally read the phonebook and I would probably listen. He does a good job with the accents, reads within flexion, without being overly dramatic, and keeps a good pace.

Furthermore, I really appreciate the way the authors took on the topic of ace phobia. As an asexual person, I have experienced pushback and marginalization from both the straight and LGBT+ communities as I have become more open about my identity. I really appreciated the authors taking time to lay this out and make it part of the plot, and I hope that if more authors do this, the growing awareness and visibility will make things easier for people like me.

Now for the problems. For whatever reason, despite the overall well crafted story, I just couldn’t believe in these characters 100%. Something about their conflicts just didn’t ring quite true to me and to my life experiences. Nisha’s terrible parents were extremely one-dimensional. The story would have been more emotionally captivating If there were glimmers of feeling from them, which were subsequently overshadowed by the alcohol use and patterns of abuse. Just making them run-of-the-mill paper cut out bad guys was too trite and simplistic, especially from two authors I know are both capable of greater depth. Also, Nisha’s estranged brothers just magically appeared in the epilogue, and for a story this long, we should have seen some of the reestablishment of that relationship on the page.

And then there was Elias. I am an asexual person who engages regularly in kink activities. I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect of seeing someone like me in a book. Unfortunately, what I saw didn’t mirror me at all and that was incredibly disappointing. Asexuality is a spectrum, so not all aces are the same. But even though Elias kept saying he was asexual over and over, once he and. Nisha entered into a sexual relationship, it’s like the evidence of Elias’ asexuality just vanished.
I really wish the authors had devoted more time to developing Elias’ interest in kink. For me, kink is a way of engaging in physical intimacy on terms that I can be comfortable with, and that aren’t necessarily sexual but are very emotionally profound. This part of the plot got dropped in right at the end, and wasn’t developed, which I think took away from an opportunity for representation.

These two authors are always worth the credit. This book had a lot of great qualities, but there were definitely areas where it could have soared higher.

Book two

Good story. a lot of detail and depth in this story. nowhere near as much sex as book one. gotta love MM Hockey Romance . well written and a Great performance by Michael Ferraiuolo.

superb

I'm so glad I waited for the audiobook, Michael Ferraiuolo outdid himself, is narration is always great but in this book it is superb, he gives a different voice to every character, which is not easy with so many different accents and his performance adds so much to the story. Can’t wait for the next one.

More than 6 hours of unrelenting, repetitive self-hatred and poor communication

I’m not going to say it’s poorly written or not entertaining, but the story really could have been edited down. The first 6 or so hours are just variations of I hate my self and why from one character (all just variations on the same couple things); and blaming himself for the rocky friendship without doing much to fix it from the other. There’s a lot of saying how strong the friendship is without much honest communication between characters. After round twenty or so of I hate myself heres why, I had to step away from the unrelenting angst for a break, especially as the plot just wallows in it without movement forward or character growth or development. It really feels like angst for the sake of angst rather than plot. Serious editing could take out the majority without changing anything of the story.

Still, I do enjoy how these authors write the interactions between characters. If you can slog through the hours and hours of angst and drama, there is a solid story at its heart. Very much a slower follow up to book 1, but I do love revisiting the characters.

A note on the narrator: He is definitely a talented performer who goes out of his way to perform rather than just read the book. Personally, I hated his portrayal of a Swedish accent. It’s such a subjective thing whether a listener feels an accent adds or detracts from a performance, so take my review with a grain of salt!

THE STORY COULD HAVE BEEN TOLD IN HALF THE TIME

In my opinion this book was way too long. The audio book comes in at just over 19 hours of listening, and I feel the story could have been told in half the time. Parts of the book felt very repetitive rehashing scenes over and over.

While the authors' did a good job with character development (they did after all have 19 hours to develop the characters), the narrator had to juggle three different accents of the main characters... French Canadian, Russian and Swedish. The good thing about the accents is it did help differentiate between the characters.

Book #1 in the "On the Board" series "Rookie Mistake" by the same authors was a better book and about three hours shorter.

Worst part two ever

Into the first few chapters it was a constant repeat of how both characters are jealous and lonely and its just too much icky moppyness and oh i want to be in a relationship with my best-friend and there was too much mentions of previous characters constantly which felt like there is no focus on the new ones i was really excited to learn more about these characters but the build up and from chapter 1 to chapter 15 there is zero progress just repeat of oww am lonely i like my best friend i’m jealous of the other one it was annoying if anything like can we get past that but we didn’t i really considered dropping it after 15 chapters of the same exact words but yeah i payed for it so am stuck with a reallllly repetitive story line… and i really could’v do without the accent its hard to understand at times.