I had just finished Bauer's Gravity, which I had read on a whim based on digging for some Injured MC troupes. Gravity was the first of his books that I read and aside from being a Male Author in the Lady dominated M/M sphere, he also does third person POV, and his stuff reads like an actual novel.

Needless to say I really enjoyed Gravity and Bauer's prose. I jumped straight to his other books to see what he had to offer. I didn't really want another Hockey Troupe book, but the rest of his books were oddly about Presidents hooking up with their Secret Service protection and I wasn't ready to jump into that pond so I looked at The Fall. The blurb feeds you the outlines of an amnesia troupe due to a hockey incident, and often times those come with a good case of traumatic brain injury which is ultimately the foundation for a good Injured MC troupe (see N.R. Walker's Missing Pieces Omnibus). So I added The Fall to my library.

I don't like to give a full synopsis of books, I stand with the idea that you should go in with just the base knowledge of what you're about to read. That goes doubly with The Fall, because yes there is an amnesia troupe... but this book takes a raging left turn half way through and asks you, the reader, to question what you're actually reading. Bauer's mid book twist basically puts you back at the very beginning of the story and you end up reading the book twice. I've seen some fairly negative reviews about this aspect of the book, but I loved it, even as the characters grow closer to the fated event at the end of the book. Then Bauer doubles down and leaves the reader to decide what actually happen. Is it a brain injury or is it fate?

But shocking twist aside Bauer gives you everything else you expect from a good Hockey book. Closeted players, a great slow burn relationship, a "will we be accepted by our team", and some fantastic spicy content. On top of that Bauer really knows how to lay down some fantastic muscle and tissue on the bones of this book. You've got heavy found family content, some real meaty emotional trauma that doesn't just exist to define a character, and plenty of hockey action.

Of the mountain of books I've read since jumping into the M/M arena at the start of 2026, I have to say this is by far my favorite. Getting a rare 10/10. It's a romance with a twist you wouldn't normally expect in a M/M hockey book and it harkens back to those cinematic stories of love that defies the known universe.

10/10