Him by Elle Kennedy & Sarina Bowen

This is, for all intents and purposes, the book that made gay sports romance a real category. Ten years after release, Him is often the book many readers (and gay sports writers!) name as their first queer romance. In 2015, it became the first queer narrative to ever win Romance Writers of America's RITA Award, a genuinely landmark moment for the genre, at a time when queer sports romance barely existed as a shelf category at all.

Tropes: college, friends to lovers, hockey romance, mm/gay romance, queer awakening, second chance, workplace

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☕️ Cozy ↔ Angst Scale

3: Good Healthy Cry

🔥 Heat Level

0/5 Closed Door

💕 Instalove ↔ Slow Burn Pace

3: Slow Burn

Synopsis

The premise of Him: Jamie Canning and Ryan “Wes” Wesley were inseparable at hockey camp as teenagers — until one ambiguous, charged night, after which Wes disappeared from Jamie’s life without explanation. Four years later, both are college hockey seniors, both headed to the Frozen Four, and their paths cross again.

Series: Book 1 of a two-book duet, followed directly by Us.

Structure: Dual POV — chapters alternate between Wes and Jamie, opening with Wes

Why We Loved It

The dual POV creates real dramatic irony instead of a mystery to solve. Because chapters alternate, the reader knows things neither character says out loud to the other — Wes’s guilt over the original silence, and the fact he’s been in love with Jamie the whole four years, sit right there on the page from his very first chapter, while Jamie is still working through confusion and hurt without that context.

It commits to genuinely mature relationship pacing for a “college hookup” premise. Neither book resolves the central relationship in one installment. By the end of Him, Jamie and Wes have made a real, costly choice — Jamie turns down a low-odds NHL draft slot in Detroit specifically to take a coaching job in Toronto, where Wes has been drafted — but they explicitly agree to stay closeted through Wes’s rookie season rather than rush a public reveal neither is ready for. That’s Book 2’s entire plot, and the fact that Him doesn’t try to cram it into one ending is a real strength, not a cliffhanger cheat.

It’s specific about what closeted athletic life actually costs, not just the drama of hiding. The tension isn’t just “will they get caught” — it’s the day-to-day toll of a teammate who lives on a different floor of the same building and drops by constantly for a beer, forcing two men who are actually building a life together to perform “just roommates” in their own home. That’s a granular, credible version of the closet’s actual mechanics, not a vague obstacle.

Where We've Discussed This

Episode 72 | Elle Kennedy on Ice: “The Deal” & “Him” — A decade after release, The Deal still outranks nearly every new sports romance on Amazon. Checked against our FAKING IT framework, here’s why it’s still the textbook.

Also appears on our favorite Gay Sports Romance Books & Series list

Love Elle Kennedy? Also check out our written review of The Deal and reaction podcast to the Off-Campus TV series.

What to Know Before You Read

This is stressful to read, by design. This isn’t a low-angst comfort read, and the eventual “surprise blowjob after a shootout bet” scene that kicks off the relationship’s physical side lands with real weight rather than as a punchline. Newer queer sports romance can gloss over the difficulties of being an out player, but this early genre definer doesn’t shy away from the homophobia and impacts that this will have on both of their careers long term.

If you dislike unresolved endings, know that there’s a Book 2 (Us). The closet, the career logistics, and the public reveal are all still pending when Him ends — this is genuinely a duet, not a standalone with a bonus sequel.

Nikki instantly read Us, because she can’t leave things unresolved and loves pining. Meg skipped it, because she struggles with ‘relationship in trouble’ books without the serotonin of the falling in love.

Where This Book Sits, a Decade Later

Compare this directly to Eden Finley & Saxon James’s Puckboys series or Rachel Reid’s Gamechangers, and the difference in the genre’s confidence is stark. Him was written in a cultural moment where a closeted-athlete storyline needed to justify itself; ten years later, an author like Eden Finley can write an entire hockey league where every major character is already out, with a Queer Collective built into the world itself. That’s not a knock on Him — it’s evidence of exactly how much ground this book helped clear for the books that came after it.

This is a legitimate literary landmark, not just a popular book. The RITA Award recognition in 2015 wasn’t a popularity contest win — it was the genre’s own establishment recognizing a queer narrative as worthy of its top honor, years before that would become unremarkable. If you’re reading this now for the first time riding the popularity of a newer book like Heated Rivalry, it’s worth knowing you’re reading the book that generation of authors is in direct conversation with.

The Verdict

Ten years on, still worth reading both for its own merits — the dual POV that lets Wes’s guilt sit in plain view while Jamie’s still catching up, the credible cost of staying closeted, the mature pacing — and for what it represents historically: the book that helped make queer sports romance a real, respected category rather than a niche experiment. If it’s your gateway into queer romance, you’re in very good, very well-documented company.