Icebreaker --> Hockey Romance

 

Read in 2023 

Book 1: UCMH series

Anastasia (ice skater) and Nathan (hockey captain) butt heads at the college they go to when a prank by a rival college causes all the ice sports to have to share the same Ice, Anastasia has an emotionally abusive skating partner who blames Nathan when his wrist gets injured (not Nathan’s fault but he takes the fall for it to save his team from not being able to play).

Nathan and Anastasia fall for each other... like instantly.  The characters in this book spend a lot of time at parties. It's a hockey book but I don't remember much hockey being involved in the book (maybe just mention of going to practice?).   The main story line is our couple having spicy times every few pages without any care to who is around, like having your friends surrounding you in a strangers car (uber)... but you know the music in the car is loud so no one can hear them... so that's cool. Stasie (the nickname our lead lady uses) is super flexible because of her ice skater training so they can get into some pretzel shapes during these times with no problem (secondary story line).

Was kind of an updated version of the movie the cutting edge  as Nate worked with her on her routine while her partner was out injured and he (Nate) wasn’t allowed to play hockey until the partner (Aaron) could skate again per his hockey coach.  

If you enjoy books with lots of spice this is the book for you (like to the point where I was trying to skip ahead past these to see if there was some kind of actual story).  It took me awhile to get through because I found Anastasia to be obnoxious (not sure how everyone loved her so much... if I treated people the way she did I wouldn't have any friends). Our leading lady at times treated Nathan poorly even though he was a really nice guy who was going above and beyond for her and his friends... not quite sure why she was so mad at him over nothing when she kept brushing over all of her skating partner's flaws and sticking up for him even when the skating partner was clearly not looking out for her best interests and doing things like fat shaming her (when she's fine the way she is).  

** side note to the toxic skating partner situation: I also found it odd that she spent a lot of time going to counseling to discuss her issues and she didn't take notice of how this guy had been treating her for ages and they were room mates. 

I didn't completely dislike this book, I just didn't find it all that great either I did like Nate and his team mates. It was super long for no apparent reason, and it also felt like there was too much going on and nothing going on at the same time and I'm not even sure how that is possible, but the author succeeded.  There are also a lot of side characters introduced that I had a hard time remembering.

Not sure if I want to try reading the second in the series might read some of the reviews to see if that one is any better. Maybe this series just isn't for me.  I do know a lot of people loved this book so maybe I just wasn't the right audience?  

Do you like this book?  Would you recommend reading the rest of the series or should I not waste my time?