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A review by booksafety
The Quarterback by Tal Bauer
5.0
Book safety, content warnings, and tropes & tags down below.
Sometimes a year changed a man in ways that couldn’t be measured in hours and days and weeks. Sometimes a year became the cornerstone of a life.
My second time reading The Quarterback, and I loved it even more this time because I read The Jock first. I had a better understanding of Justin and his reactions. I will start this by saying that I stand by saying that Colton can do no wrong. He is an absolute sweetheart who just wants someone to care. To show up. To love him. He’s probably the most in-touch-with-his-feelings 22 year old there ever was. That doesn’t make anything easier for him, but he is very emotionally mature (thankfully). There’s a massive age gap here (20 or 21 years), but it never feels creepy or predatory. Colton and Nick were just friends and neither of them had ever looked at a man sexually. They just fell for each other.
His first real friends in he couldn’t remember how long were his son, his son’s boyfriend, and their best friend, and that sounded like a midlife crisis in the making.
It’s a beautiful story with some heartbreak (it’s Tal Bauer after all), but nothing quite as crushing as in The Jock, in my opinion.
“The only thing I ever wanted more than football was for someone to love me.”
As per usual, the side character are all distinct and only add to the story. This book is as much a love story as it is a ‘life story’ of sorts, especially for Colton, who is trying to figure out who he is and what he wants.
If you loved me, I’d never make you regret it. I’d never give you a reason to wish we hadn’t met. If you loved me, I’d never let you drink to try to forget us.
⬇️ Blanket spoiler warning ⬇️
⚠️ Tropes & tags ⚠️
Sexual awakening x2
Friend’s dad
Age gap
Football player
Friends to lovers
Single dad
Internship/working together
Friends to lovers
Secret relationship
Roommates
⚠️⚠️ Content warning ⚠️⚠️
Injury
Surgery
Hospitalization
Homophobia (off page, mostly)
Mentions of religious bigotry
Explicit sexual content
Fear of abandonment
Mentions of child abandonment
Divorce
⚠️⚠️⚠️ Book safety ⚠️⚠️⚠️
Cheating: No
OM/OW drama: Nick gets divorced during the book. Nothing happens between the MCs before that.
Third-act breakup: Yes
POV: 3rd person, dual POV
Genre: Contemporary romance, M/M
Strict roles or versatile: Strict roles
He had the bones and the heart of a man but the trepidations of a boy.
Colton understood that bone-deep yearning for a father, the poignant prickling of pain when you wanted and hoped and tried so hard, but all you heard was silence.
He had a cowboy name and a pair of cowboy boots, and every Texas boy had a hat in his closet, but if he was dropped in the countryside, he’d die in a ditch before he managed to unfuck himself enough to go the right way down a dirt track.
How had this happened? How had he fallen for Nick Swanscott? Well… nonstop togetherness probably had something to do with it. His weakness, too, for a man to turn to him with a smile and a word of praise and a teaspoon’s worth of attention.
Sometimes a year changed a man in ways that couldn’t be measured in hours and days and weeks. Sometimes a year became the cornerstone of a life.
My second time reading The Quarterback, and I loved it even more this time because I read The Jock first. I had a better understanding of Justin and his reactions. I will start this by saying that I stand by saying that Colton can do no wrong. He is an absolute sweetheart who just wants someone to care. To show up. To love him. He’s probably the most in-touch-with-his-feelings 22 year old there ever was. That doesn’t make anything easier for him, but he is very emotionally mature (thankfully). There’s a massive age gap here (20 or 21 years), but it never feels creepy or predatory. Colton and Nick were just friends and neither of them had ever looked at a man sexually. They just fell for each other.
His first real friends in he couldn’t remember how long were his son, his son’s boyfriend, and their best friend, and that sounded like a midlife crisis in the making.
It’s a beautiful story with some heartbreak (it’s Tal Bauer after all), but nothing quite as crushing as in The Jock, in my opinion.
“The only thing I ever wanted more than football was for someone to love me.”
As per usual, the side character are all distinct and only add to the story. This book is as much a love story as it is a ‘life story’ of sorts, especially for Colton, who is trying to figure out who he is and what he wants.
If you loved me, I’d never make you regret it. I’d never give you a reason to wish we hadn’t met. If you loved me, I’d never let you drink to try to forget us.
⬇️ Blanket spoiler warning ⬇️
⚠️ Tropes & tags ⚠️
Sexual awakening x2
Friend’s dad
Age gap
Football player
Friends to lovers
Single dad
Internship/working together
Friends to lovers
Secret relationship
Roommates
⚠️⚠️ Content warning ⚠️⚠️
Injury
Surgery
Hospitalization
Homophobia (off page, mostly)
Mentions of religious bigotry
Explicit sexual content
Fear of abandonment
Mentions of child abandonment
Divorce
⚠️⚠️⚠️ Book safety ⚠️⚠️⚠️
Cheating: No
OM/OW drama: Nick gets divorced during the book. Nothing happens between the MCs before that.
Third-act breakup: Yes
POV: 3rd person, dual POV
Genre: Contemporary romance, M/M
Strict roles or versatile: Strict roles
He had the bones and the heart of a man but the trepidations of a boy.
Colton understood that bone-deep yearning for a father, the poignant prickling of pain when you wanted and hoped and tried so hard, but all you heard was silence.
He had a cowboy name and a pair of cowboy boots, and every Texas boy had a hat in his closet, but if he was dropped in the countryside, he’d die in a ditch before he managed to unfuck himself enough to go the right way down a dirt track.
How had this happened? How had he fallen for Nick Swanscott? Well… nonstop togetherness probably had something to do with it. His weakness, too, for a man to turn to him with a smile and a word of praise and a teaspoon’s worth of attention.