On and off the ice

Revolve
by Bal Khabra

Toronto: Berkley, 2025
$19.00 / 9780593818305

Reviewed by Jessica Poon

*

Female orgasms, emotionally intelligent men with friends, and hand-knit gloves given without incurring the Boyfriend Sweater Curse are all present in spades in Revolve by Bal Khabra, a romance novel.

Sierra is an Olympic figure skater determined to win. Problem is, she experiences debilitating panic attacks when she’s around an ice rink, the consequence of an injury from when her former skating partner, Justin, dropped her. With the accident being viewable online, Sierra is considered damaged goods, whereas Justin already has a new partner.

After failing a drug test, Dylan’s recent captaincy on his hockey team is rescinded. His NHL dreams feel more and more remote. As a former figure skater, Dylan is offered the chance to be reinstated on his hockey team if he partners up with Sierra. Though Sierra expresses reluctance—Dylan is so cocky and smug and infuriatingly attractive—she has no other option. The mutual sexual tension is undeniable.

Per convention, Sierra and Dylan are both extremely hot. Sierra’s romantic history is brief, having once been involved with Justin, who was controlling about her diet and harshly critical in general. In contrast, Dylan can barely remember a girl he’s had a threesome with and has never slept with the same girl twice. He’s disappointed with his mother for remaining with his father, who continues to lie about infidelity. At risk of glibness, he absolutely has daddy issues. 

From the onset, Sierra and Dylan’s dynamic is rife with explicit sexual tension, playful ribbing, and ostensible hostility (you know, to mask all that sexual tension). But when Dylan helps ground Sierra during a panic attack, it becomes undeniable that he’s not just some playboy douchebag. 

It is well-known that anyone in a new relationship may abandon their friendships—if they had any in the first place. In Revolve, however, Dylan, refreshingly, has a robust friend group. One friend insists on dragging him for hikes and asking him to translate Turkish dramas. Another friend makes him soup (inedible, but still) when he’s sick. Although Dylan’s convinced himself that it’s his duty to perform the role of a nonchalant Lothario who’s all fun and nothing else, his friends accept and welcome all of him—even the parts he’s desperate to hide. And so, too, does Sierra, who has her own self-worth issues. Given that Dylan is an athlete whose friends are predominantly fellow male athletes, it’s even more remarkable that his friends are comfortable enough in their masculinity that earnestly watching Twilight does not invite derision. 

Words can hardly express how much damage When Harry Met Sally has done to invite suspicion upon cross-sex friendships between heterosexual men and women tends to invite. All this to say, I was very happy that Dylan has a cross-sex friendship—the girlfriend of a friend of his, in fact—without any drama whatsoever. 

Both Sierra and Dylan are given admirable complexity, though Sierra’s voice is just slightly more convincing. In the passage below, there’s a deceptive simplicity establishing Sierra’s desire to align with normalcy, and her inherent belief that she is aberrant and undesirable, which is, in fact, one of the most normal feelings in the world:

I had my first kiss at nineteen and lost my virginity a twenty. Neither were memorable. I got it over with so no one could say I’d given up my whole life for skating, even though, deep down, I knew I had.
And maybe that’s what’s always made me feel different, like I didn’t live up to the experiences everyone else seemed to treasure. Like I wasn’t something desirable or wanted.
To this day when someone’s gaze drifts down my body, I become almost desperate to know what they’re thinking.

There’s a funny scene where Dylan asks Sierra what she’s proud of and she pauses for two minutes, apparently unable to think of anything besides getting out of bed (to use the common parlance, this was very relatable and nothing to scoff at). Also, there’s a somewhat unnecessary epilogue, but given how much care and love that Greater Vancouver Area author Khabra (Spiral) has for her characters, the indulgence is more than forgivable.

Through each other, and their friends, Sierra and Dylan come to realize they are neither irrevocably broken nor unlovable. They are both more at ease with giving than receiving generosity. If you like sex scenes featuring enthusiastic consent and love and enjoy complex characters with a side of redemption, Revolve is a winning escapist antidote to grey days and seasonal blahs.

Jessica Poon is a writer in East Vancouver. [Editor’s note: Jessica interviewed Sheung-King, and reviewed recent books by Léa Taranto, Martin West, Terry Berryman, Ian and Will Ferguson, Christine Stringer, Faye Arcand, Liann Zhang, Sarah Leavitt, Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella, Angela Douglas, Zazie Todd, Holly Brickley, Alastair McAlpine, and Jack Wang for BCR.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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