Genre: Romance
Publisher: Pig & Bear Publishing
Pages: 447
Release Date: August 23, 2022
Anastasia Allen has worked her entire life for a shot at Team USA.
A competitive figure skater since she was five years old, a full college scholarship thanks to her place on the Maple Hills skating team, and a schedule that would make even the most driven person weep, Stassie comes to win.
No exceptions.
Nathan Hawkins has never had a problem he couldn’t solve. As captain of the Maple Hills Titans, he knows the responsibility of keeping the hockey team on the ice rests on his shoulders.
When a misunderstanding results in the two teams sharing a rink, and Anastasia’s partner gets hurt in the aftermath, Nate finds himself swapping his stick for tights, and one scary coach for an even scarier one.
The pair find themselves stuck together in more ways than one, but it’s fine, because Anastasia doesn’t even like hockey players…right?
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I picked up Icebreaker on a whim because I saw a few TikToks raving about it and with a 4.20 star rating from over sixty-nine thousand reviews on Goodreads I figured it would be good. It is good, but I had a couple issues with it bringing down my rating.
Icebreaker is a sports romance with friends-to-lovers vibes that’s full of angst and smut. Grace doesn’t make readers wait long until Anastasia and Nathan get together. However, that’s not to say that it felt rushed or without any build up. The chemistry between the two characters is fire hot and the angst palpable.
Anastasia and Nathan’s chemistry worked so well for me because of who they were as characters. Anastasia was headstrong, stubborn, and driven. Nathan was also headstrong, stubborn, and driven, but he was also the perfect balance between your typical alphamale and sensitive/vulnerable.
The reason I rated the novel 3.5 stars instead of 5 is because I disliked Anastasia’s skating partner. From the moment he was introduced, he had no redeeming qualities and existed as a foil to Anastasia and Nathan as well as a catalyst for the plot.
Trigger warning for eating disorders/disordered eating. One bigger issue I had with Icebreaker was Anastasia and her calendar and diet plan. Anastasia needs control, so every part of life is detailed in her calendar. However, that control did not extend to her diet plan. She let her skating partner have control over that. This was infuriating to no end and his motives were not satisfactorily explained.
Overall, Icebreaker was a fun, emotional, and angsty sports romance with a swoonworthy male love interest and interesting secondary characters that will surely get their own novels.
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Have you read Icebreaker? What did you think?
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