The Foxhole Court

The Foxhole Court entered my life because I once spent approximately an hour watching The Book Leo explain this series on YouTube and eventually thought, “well, I suppose I can commit a few more hours, just for a personal touch.”

I do not understand the made-up sport in this book, but to be fair I also do not understand real sports, so I don’t think that reflects badly on the narrative. What I do understand is entertaining character dynamics, deeply traumatized boys, and excellent banter, all of which this book delivers in abundance.

The whole thing feels wildly too intense for university athletics—these people are behaving like the fate of nations rests on racquet violence—but I was nevertheless invested. I am also aware there show more is apparently a very slow burn queer storyline developing across the series (not here though, we are slooooow burning), which unfortunately means I will now probably have to read all of them. Such is the burden of enjoying emotionally damaged fictional* men.

*Please note that I do not enjoy my actual men traumatized, my circle is ideally populated with well-adjusted individuals who have either worked through their issues in a healthy way (therapy) or never had these issues to begin with (but still ideally went to do the therapy) show less

I have read this book (and the series) about four times now over the course of the past five years, and there is always one constant to how I feel about this book: Picking this book up is an instant loss of time, everytime. There is no putting this book down. You will read the first page just to clarify something and find yourself halfway through the book before you can even blink.

The rest of the series is much the same. Nora Sakavic writes in a way that is at once blunt, chock-full of information and fast-paced, constantly unveiling secrets, thrills and mysteries. This is not a series I'd recommend for long flights or for lunch breaks.

I will admit this book and the series has it's flaws; if you are a stickler for realistic plots and show more are sensitive to 'deep', unrealistic dialogue, I would not recommend this. However, for those that know that fiction is fiction and can handle a bit of cheese here and there, this is a really good book (and series) to kill time and get involved with.

As for the characters, Kevin deserved better and I would kill to read a whole series just going over the entirety of All For The Game from his perspective. show less

!@#$#@!!

I don't read fantasy and this book hovered on the edge, with its fantastical hybrid ice hockey game, Exy. Its cast of characters were larger than life, and often completely unsympathetic and cruel to each other. One protagonist, the MC Neil, has lived a life of physical abuse from his gangster father that's like a terrifying Yakuza movie.

Neil's one consolation in life is to play Exy. He "disappears" into this game and feels momentary safety. And wow! does he deserve a consolation! given the horrendous life he's led up to this point, which, if we were told how old he is I missed - I assume it is 18 or 19.

The intensity of this novel, which fortunately got me past the chaos at the start, kept me riveted, and left me hoping for the show more best for Neil.

I think there are about 10 in the Exy team: males and females. They are important characters in the book, and sufficiently intriguing that I hope they appear in later books.

I'm almost finished and there doesn't appear to be any romantic interest for Neil, so it must be in the next book. He's obsessed with his mentor and assistant coach to the team, Kevin. But Kevin picks on Neil unrelentingly, though he does eventually give him some encouragement by mentoring him with extra training in the middle of the night, every night - another kind of bullying or targeting.

It's unexpected how invested I am in Neil getting a break, so I see myself picking up the next books in the series.

Nora Safavic has made a contribution to young adult romance with this unusual novel - how much of my high praise is due to the narration I couldn't say - but she's been incredibly lucky that Alexander Cendese narrates the series. show less

Here's the deal, I don't consider many books to be a guilty pleasure. I might have books I don't recommend to a lot of (most) people, or books that get me through things that somehow aren't that good, but I refuse to be guilty. That said, this is the closest book to a guilty pleasure that I have right now because it's like a handful of gummy bears. I know I shouldn't. There are other books/healthy foods. But if you get in my way/bad mouth my gummies I will hurt you.

I struggled for the first 15% of this book. I couldn't keep anyone straight. Andrew and Aaron blended together. Neil and Nicky just sound too much alike, and they were all sort of terrible to each other but there was this magic hook of needing to know what happened to them show more all, and it was just well written. It flowed beautifully. It captured emotions and fear without meandering and even when I wanted to hit these boys I also wanted to gently collect them under my wings like a mama hen and peck out the eyes of anyone who came for them.

And then it got worse because there were more of them, and they were these little broken fox pups and things were falling apart and they were just fighting and struggling and bearing their teeth at the world. And I was in love. I read all 3 books one after the other, staying up until late into the early morning hours. And then I finished and sat there, sort of stunned, because what a fricking wild ride. And then I sat down and I read them all again, one after the other, with a tiny bit of self control, by which I mean I fell asleep with my glasses on reading them, but it was at 11 o'clock at night and not 1 or 2 a.m., so progress?

So: Do you like broken people coming together against insurmountable odds? Do you like a hidden, twisted back story that gets more twisted the more it's revealed? Make that a whole lot of twisted, rotten back stories that somehow weave themselves together beautifully? Do you love the antihero? I mean a couple of serious, unlikable antiheroes that would spit on you one minute and take a bullet for you the next, cursing you the entire way for being stupid while asking if you're okay as they bleed out in front of you sort of anti-hero? Do you like slow-burn romance? Three books worth of slow-burn romance? A slow burning confused boy loves boy romance? Yes? Oh, honey, I'm so sorry for the hours of sleep you are about to lose. Worth every single tired day during which you can't explain that you're kind of in love with a sport that's not even real and a group of young people who both need to be swatted and hugged so much that you don't even know what to do. show less

27/01/2017
reading this feels like coming home. in retrospect things make so much more sense. but the most painful part is neil's character development. he's grown so much.

03/09/2016
i would give it a thousand stars if i could. so much better the second time around when i actually understand what's going on. i cried a lil bit at the end, when andrew does the thing.

22/03/2016
this book was...... different. didn't think i would like it because i'm not a very big sports fan, but i ended up loving it somehow. it wasn't that i fell madly in love with it, it was just that it kept me reading. i feel like it's very much a character driven story? but i never once felt bored.
i probably enjoyed it so much because of the characters, characters who show more were so realistic?? and actual human types? all of them had layers to their personalities and they had complex stories and they were all three-dimensional and i absolutely loved it. most of the time i had no idea what i was supposed to feel towards any given character this is genius.
and the sport itself is very creative though i can't really imagine it, but i did like how it was described and how it was the central part of the story without being shoved in my face.
and then there's neil. i have very mixed feelings about him. mainly because i don't really know a whole lot about him?? we are given information about his past and childhood and current situation and his thoughts were all there but i still wouldn't be able to tell what kind of person he is? what gestures he makes what are his qualities or flaws or just anything?? i guess that's kind of good because he has to kind of act a certain way to live the life he is living but still. i hope we get to know him better as the series goes on.
and the absolute best thing about it is that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO ROMACE ISN'T THAT JUST FANTASTIC though i do ship neil and kevin heh
all in all i thoroughly enjoyed this book and i can't wait to start the next one. show less

I couldn't put this book down. Sports! Friends forming a family! Dramatic misfits! Such cute (with that I mean hardcore) characters!

First, let us get this out of the way: this book sucks the first pages. Probably the first two chapters, or even longer. But do not give up on it, because the rest of the book is completely worth it. So is the rest of the series, which I read in less than twenty-four hours.

This is a book about family, but not only the biological one. It is about the importance of support and friends, how they can change your life and you change theirs. “The foxhole court” family is not perfect; they are a bunch of misfits thrown together with only one common goal: to be champions & make people stop laughing at their show more Exy team. That is: except for Andrew, because he is an uncaring, high (and protective) jerk.

“The Palmetto State University Foxes were a team of talented rejects and junkies because Wymack only recruited athletes from broken homes. His decision to turn the Foxhole Court into a halfway house of sorts was nice in theory, but it meant his players were fractured isolationists who couldn’t get along long enough to get through a game.”

And yes… this is a sports book about a sport that does not exists outside of “The foxhole court”s cover. Exy is completely fictional, but seems like a mix between lacrosse and… Rugby, perhaps? A more violent twist to the sport anyway. It seems like making up a sport was preferable in how certain rules and the whole sports culture had to be different from what we know, for this book to be what it is. We already have Quidditch, so why not Exy. Easier name to spell too. Fictional sport or not, this book has an authentic i-will-do-anything-to-be-the-best feel and passion, which I like. Nothing better than jealousy and threats to motivate you.

There is no romance in this book, for reasons you will realize if reading the rest of the series. I found this really refreshing? There is a lot going on with backstories, trying to get these fucked up teens on a straight path and be sort of friends/teammates. There is definitely enough drama to go around anyway. A lot like the raven cycle, this book has the notion of a coming romance, but is too busy that it is of importance.

“Hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing, but he [Neil] thought perhaps he liked it.”

I will be the first to admit that this book got some problems, much like the characters in it. I love “The Foxhole Court” and its characters anyway, with flaws and all. Uncommonly, the series only gets better from here, and at the end of the first book, it was pretty exciting already. It was an easy read, but with dept as well. And with a squad you will love. show less

tw: mentions of drugging, rape

k. so. what the fuck was that.

idk what y'all know about this book, and i honestly don't care, but i was expecting a story about a kid who survives an abusive home life getting a second chance and ending up on a sports team and a m/m romance. basically a somewhat angsty sports-romance heartstopper. this is what i wanted okay the pastels

and this is what i gotttt: emo shit that would not fly or make sense irl, the most unlikable characters ever, some batshit mafia plot, bully romance *gag*, and just straight-up glorified abuse?? whyyyy

big sigh let me just summarize this for y'all.

this book follows a boy named neil but neil has a ✨ dark past ✨ because his family was abusive and involved in the fucking show more mafia, so neil is basically hiding his true identity all the time. neil gets recruited to this college sports team for a fictional sport called "exy" and i don't really understand what it is because i hate sports so please don't ask me. there are these three (sometimes four?) guys on the team who are essentially bullies to neil but neil can handle himself because of his ✨ dark past ✨ so whatever. but then the boys drag neil out to a club and drug him and get borderline rape-y all because they believe he's a spy for the other team. then neil decides to stay on the team even after that because why the fuck not. (by this point in the book the author has used every slur and derogatory name for gay people btw.) then there's a bunch of sports scenes that i skimmed because i don't give a shit. i think i was so mad that i blacked out because i cannot remember how this ended at all. ain't no way this wasn't a fanfiction turned into an original story for publication. also one of the shit ass bullies is neil's love interest so there's that.

anyways. this was a miserable experience. fuck this, fuck haikyuu because y'all told me this would be like that for some reason, i'm out!

gonna go play the newly-ported gay lawyer investigations game because i'm tired. i'm so tired. show less