Hello friends! Welcome back to another blog post; today I will bring you a heart-warming story from an ice rink, in Maple Hills. Icebreaker was my first college romance this year, and my first ever sports romance in general. I must say that I wasn’t expecting much since my taste in romance is easily on the darker side, however, reading this book was so much fun! I must say that the Bookstagram community had a huge impact on me, and I am forever grateful to them for giving me such amazing book recommendations. Let’s get into the review, shall we? ⛸
The book is about an amazing romance filled with respect, understanding, friendship and kindness. It has been a good while since I’ve read a male character this kind and caring towards the love interest and I must say that I appreciate it! It follows a figure skater, an Olympic team dreamer Anastasia and a hockey team captain Nathan. Our characters are college students with dreams and great friendships. Anastasia is a strong character, a little control freak over her life and she has been working to make herself feel better with therapy (wow, a real professional help in a book? Perfect!). Due to her sport, she has competitive nature, she does everything she can to get into the Olympic team and we get a good insight into her relationship with the sport throughout the book, from how she sees her parents and how she reacts to their look to ice-skating, her issues with eating due to her skating partner, her way to find the sweetest love and understanding herself. To be honest with you, each character in this book has amazing development throughout the story. Even the side characters, we see how they act day by day and see them find the love, and passion for what they are doing and the friendships they are forming. Everything is blessed in this book. Nathan, our male lead, is also an amazing character with a lot of depth. He is caring, towards his friends and Stassie, towards his team and his responsibilities as a captain of a promising hockey team. We see him sacrifice a lot (especially the shit down with Aaron) and with Stassie. He respects all her needs, respects her choices and genuinely wants the best for her like every man in love should.
After reading so much dark romance filled with alpha males, craze, anger issues and all that jazz; this was a cool summer breeze on a beautiful morning. Nathan has his fair share of development in the story too, at first he is portrayed like a fuck boy; popular, handsome and successful captain but the more you read into the story and the more you read about his thoughts in his chapters, we can see a gradual change for the good. The book goes from Anastasia’a point of view to Nathan’s point of view, which helps you to read about both sides of the sweet love story we have here. We read their thoughts clearly and I love books with different points of view a lot, it makes me feel closer to the characters. I feel like it helps you to connect with them in a unique way, a book is always amazing when you can relate and Hannah Grace did an amazing job providing the story using both our leads.
The language of the book was sweet too, exactly something you would expect from college students. Decent language, easy to keep up with, funny and enjoyable. All characters had a good connection with the book and I love JJ, Sabrina, Russ, and Henry. I am still meh with the thought of Aaron but I do not like thinking of him as the villain of the story, he is just a toxic person and this is life, we all have our fair share of toxic people in our lives (though I do not feel bad to say that I hate him very strongly). Most of the story includes parties, drinking and oh my got some good spice there. Let’s talk about the spice okay? I feel like it deserves to be mentioned because Nathan Hawkins deserves to be mentioned in this matter too. 🥵😳
At the beginning of the book, we have a frenemies situation between our characters, and the slow burn (not in the smut section but in the feelings for each other part) was so well written. Nathan Hawkins can destroy me anytime he wishes, but I am glad that they have found love. Through well-fought love, everything is possible I guess. I loved seeing how comfortable and confident Anastasia became around him, the spice, the tension between them getting better and better and better and better. I couldn’t think of a better ending for this book. Nothing sounds better than what they have, with Bunny and with… well, I shouldn’t spoil it for you since I am literally about to harass you to read this book, should I?
I don’t know what you are doing or reading but hear me out, friends. Read this book. The sweetest romance, the kindest characters, amazing character development, and drama without being cliche; this book has everything you need in your life and I am so happy that I had the chance to read it! Until I see you in my next post friends! BYE! 🌷✨
Luster of Books 