The Open Era by Edward Schmit

Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026--San Antonio

 The Open Era by Edward Schmit is a romance novel building on the success of Heated Rivalry which I read when it was first published and before it became the popular TV series that it is now.  Instead of the story of two hockey players, this book is built around two tennis players.  One has entered the pre-playoffs at the US Open Championship.  If he wins the pre-playoffs, he will automatically become an official candidate in the championship playoffs which will access to the big money of the highest levels of professional tennis.  Lots of attention is on him because of being the first openly gay player in professional tennis.  The other player is the #2 ranked tennis player in the world.  In Heated Rivalry, the two hockey players started a secret relationship while being drafted within the highest professional hockey league and planned their careers around being able to maintain that relationship while pretending to be straight in public.  In this book, everyone knows that Austin Hardy is gay.  But Austin and everyone else wonders why Diego Cruz is obviously being very friendly with him.  Another difference between the characters of the two books is that the players in the hockey story have been actively gay, but closeted, for years before they ever meet.  In this book, Austin has only had one brief relationship as a teenager and has not been sexually active since then even thought he is publicly out as a gay man.  Diego supposedly has never been active in a gay sense.  So do not expect as much sex as there was in the hockey book.  Instead, this is more of a will they/won't they romance story with lots of "hickups" stalling the possibilities in a repeating start/stop narrative.  It's a decent book worth reading to make your own decision of whether they should end up together or just enjoy what they can while it lasts.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.