Hockey & Skating, Single Dad Romance.

3.75 stars

This book starts out with quite a strong meet cute in the form of a hockey puck to the head. I liked the concept but I think that some of the aspects of the book fell short.

I liked the two main characters flirty banter, bonding over crappy day time TV , which is actually quite entertaining, and all the little jokes they make were done really well. I also thought that Coco and Logans daughters relationship was sweet (she coaches her ice skating lessons).

I didn't like how Logan grovelled when he was making up to Coco after the third act breakup. If someone were to send be un ungodly amount of gifts like that I would get so annoyed lol. He kinda just threw money at her and hoped for the best.

Overall, a nice, casual hockey romance read.

Thank you to Netgalley for the arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book just wasn’t for me and I DNF’d at 75%; I found the book really slow going, plus the fact that the Story revolves around the FMC being in hospital was a big no from me.

A cute rom-com. Definitely a pretty easy read with lots of romance and fun characters. An enjoyable read if your looking for something light with not a lot of substance. Premise was good however the execution was subpar

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read an arc of this book! I did find this book quite enjoyable, but I found the ending was rushed and not quite what I expected it to be. The conflict only lasted about a chapter, and it wasn’t even really a conflict. There were some plot points that were glossed over that I would have liked more information on (Coco’s backstory being one of them). I did find there were some small spelling errors and some repeated phrases, but that is nothing a quick editing can’t fix.

Loved this book, I love the plot, especially with this book’s plot involving a figure skater and a hockey player. Their dynamic just worked. This book was one I couldn’t put down, I loved it so much that I can’t wait into read it again.

Reviewed for NetGalley:

This had promise, but I slowly lost interest with the length of time the story took place in the hospital.

I did enjoy Coco’s character overall, the plot just dragged a bit for me

This book sounded great and had so much potential but was just mediocre. It was also one of the most poorly edited books I’ve ever seen. Full paragraphs were repeated and it had more punctuation issues than I could count; it was rough.

The kid felt like an afterthought. Both characters felt really surface level, like I didn’t get to really know either of them. Again it had great ideas and even some good banter but it was just poorly executed.

Thank you Netgalley, Siesta Key House and Lisa Daily for an Advanced Reader Copy of this book!
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Read this book if you just need to watch two people fall in love and be happy!
Is this book full of instalove? Yes it’s the text book definition, the main character’s immediately fall in love with no backstory what so ever. But I read this when I needed a feel good, quick pace romance and that’s exactly what I got!
The fake dating gets established 50% of the way through the book after they’re already falling for each other instead of the beginning. It’s also not a deal between the two main characters but something set up between one and side character for the 2 main characters to date for money. That part really rubbed me the wrong way and felt icky. However I did really like how it all ended because I was pretty nervous about that. It did the storyline justice and they best way they could have navigated the plot.
I wanted about 50-100 more pages for more content in between the current chapters. This could have added so much more to the story with details and character development. Everything except the strong feelings the main characters have for each other feels surface level.
The author did set up a book 2 with some cute characters! But I do want to see a Marisa book soon!

The Cutting Edge by Lisa Daily.

I am very torn about my review for this book. There is good stuff here, especially for fans of sports and hockey romance novels….but there are some isues holding it back.

I really do try not to harp on text-level mistakes in an ARC. However, since I was sent this ARC post-publication, I don’t think expecting a publication-ready book is out of bounds. But I truly hope the text I read is not the same version that went to print. Entire passages are repeated, clearly cut and pasted in revisions at some point. Dialogue loops and repeats—both within and between conversations. No one knows how to spell poor Mrs. Markham’s (Marham? Markam?) name. Repeatedly incorrect dialogue punctuation that makes conversations even more frustrating to attempt to parse. All of these are errors that should have been caught by an editor—and I hope I just got a very early version somehow.

All that aside,, I had originally picked up this ARC to try to understand part of the hockey romance book craze on BookTok. My husband was a hockey player for a long time and I do not understand the appeal. I read sports romances and I just smell sweaty pads and jerseys. However, I’m not here to yuck someone else’s yum. Just on a mission to understand.

(Spoiler alert: I still don’t get it after finishing this bo one)

To be fair, Daily hits all the sports romance tropes. And I did like the banter between Coco and Logan. But what bothered me more than the sports tropes was the consistent emphasis on gender. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I was bothered by the writing that consistently referenced Logan’s manly muscles, manly jaw, manly hair, manly scent, manly legs….you get the point. And don’t even get me started on the ex-boyfriend who appears at about 85% to cause drama and let Logan be a manly man. And Coco is always feminine, always pretty. The scene with the WAGS saying they need to look pretty to motivate their men really encapsulated all of this. I did appreciate the camaraderie among women instead of putting them against each other, though.

So if you are already a hockey romance or sports romance fan, you may enjoy this book. Daily does deftly handle the tropes and have some real moments of excellent dialogue that readers will enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Siesta Key for the ebook ARC. All opinions are mine alone.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book. All opinions are 100% my own.

I requested this book because of the really cute cover and the promise of a sports romance. This book delivered in this as well as some other really cute tropes. The male main character, Logan, is a cinnamon roll single dad who tries so hard to be perfect.

I didn’t like the female main character, Coco. She got annoyed really easily at Logan over things he didn’t, at least in my opinion, do wrong. Logan gave her so much and she barely gave anything back in return.

This book also had the strangest pacing. Almost half of the book took place over three days and then suddenly we were skipping weeks/months in one chapter, without seeing any story growth. There were also a couple of inconsistencies with coco’s surname, which was different in the first few chapters to the end of the book.

There were a few missed opportunities in this book, such as Mrs markham’s cancer journey and how this related to Logan’s own experience with his mums cancer. Coco’s relationship with her parents could have been explored more too.

I’m a bit confused by the description for the second book in the series, which describes Logan’s teammate cam as a ‘man tramp’, yet we meet his ‘serious’ girlfriend in a chapter in this book. I guess I’ll just have to read the next book in the series to see how the author works with this!

the story in this book was cute and easy to follow along, which made it an okay read for me. there were unfortunately some issues with the book, where some small things were being repeated shortly after one another and it did not seem to have been proof read well enough. in addition to that there were some small parts of the book which I think should have had more explanations or just not been there at all. overall it was sweet, but too many things that bothered me.

3.5 stars from me. I really enjoyed this!! My first hockey romance & I loved that Coco was also an elite athlete. Poppy was the sweetest child although sometimes she acted waaay older than six. And I really loved Logan!!! Spoiling Coco to absolute excess I loved, and looking after Poppy so well. And I actually felt like the conflicts/miscommunications were realistic, something I think lots of romances don’t do! The only criticism is that there were a few places with some editing errors, were the same paragraph was repeated across in two different sections - once about her parents splitting the debt when they got divorced and once about Logan’s worries about dating with Poppy. I’m looking forward to reading about Cam & Lana in Lisa’s next book! Thanks so much for the ARC.

Had to DNF. I tried for so long to give this book a chance, but it really just did not grab my attention or pull me in. I wasn't a big fan of the writing style, and books told in first person can sometimes be hard for me to get into. I enjoyed Poppy's character, she was funny and cute, but this was a hard read for me.
Although this book wasn't my cup of tea, it's a hockey book with a single father and a figure skater, so I do suggest to give it a try regardless it may be for you, just wasn't for me.

DNF:
Needs a lot more editing, the quotation marks aren’t consistent, there was a paragraph repeated a couple sentences after the first time, and the writing feels a little juvenile.

Logan Rivers is a star pro hockey player who's currently in a bad streak - no goals in the last three games and the whole team is struggling.

Logan's daughter is taking ice skating lessons with former Olympic figure skater Coco who is trying to juggle teaching gigs to finance her own training sessions. She's asked by the hockey coach to be Logan's "lucky charm", by attending training sessions and matches, and his play is improving.

It's a rather sweet story.

2.5 ⭐️

Tbh, I don't even know ho0w to review this book... This novels follows the story of Coco, an Olympic ice skater, and Logan, a professional hockey player.

I honestly didn’t expect this book to be like this. I was looking forward to read a cute hockey romance (which felt like a subplot) but they spend half of the book in the hospital because of her having a brief concussion. To add, it's so fast-paced written but they actually don’t even kiss until almost the end of the book.

I received this book as an eARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review; and there were so many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors that made it even worse to read.

And even with all of that, it still wasn’t the worst hockey romance I ever read.

⭐️⭐️.5 rounding to ⭐️⭐️
🌶️
This was a cute little sports romance. It kept me interested while reading but I was just looking for more. There were also a lot of grammatical errors and even points in the story where I think questions were missing and we only got the answers because i was a little confused. There was also repeat paragraphs so overall the book could use a big edit. I tried not to let the grammatical errors effect my rating but there were also inconsistencies in the story line. I liked the whole plot like hockey player/figure skater meet cute thing but Coco had a massive concussion and fractured skull, aren’t you not supposed to be on your phone or watching tv with that kind of injury? I also felt their relationship was really rushed, normally with single dads there’s more involvement with the kids, there was also reference to a dog but that wasn’t introduced.

All in all, not the worst I’ve read, but not great.. not good enough that I’d recommend…

Who called this a steamy romance? I need to know so that I can explain to them what exactly steamy means. Because this was not it. The couple doesn't do anything more than kiss until like 75%+ into the book. And when they do finally hookup there is barley anything to it. Ugh, straight people are so boring. And that's not even the worst thing about this book. Has the author ever even seen a hockey game? I feel like every thing they know about hockey was learned from reading a Sports Illustrated Kids book. And could the term "puckbunny" have been used any more? I'm sure the author could try but then it would really be on every single page. The writing is not great. The neighbors name changes or is spelled wrong constantly. The same phrases are repeated over and over and over. And I'm pretty sure at one point the author means to name drop Phil Kessel but calls him Phil Kesser or some nonsense like that. Just...just skip this one.

The Cutting Edge by Lisa Daily follows Coco Charmaine, a figure skater/teacher, and Logan Rivers, a hockey player.

Coco who is a professional figure skater also teaches figure skating. One day her students father doesn't show up in time to pick her up and she goes looking for him, since he works in the same place but in a different building. She enters a building and gets hit by a hockey puck right to her head, the hockey player ends up being her student's dad, Logan. The first 30% of the story is spent with Coco in the hospital with a major concussion and Logan visiting her. They get to know each other as friends and then start dating. The rest of the book is about the two of them dating and a small conflict arises that later gets resolved just like in every romance story.

I had high hopes for this book being a hockey romance, especially since it was between a hockey player and a figure skater. Honestly, after finishing this book all I can say is that I was bored the entire time I was reading it.

The book has potential, it has all the necessary elements of a good romance story but it was lacking in a few things. There wasn't really an introduction to the characters, they end up meeting each other within the first like 5 chapters. We don't really get to set the scene as a reader, there's barely any description of world so that we can imagine it. There's also lots of transitions that jump from one scene to the next so I never really knew if the scene was going to play out in the next chapter or if we were going to end up somewhere else.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I reviewed this book to review on Netgalley, I requested this because the title and the blurb caught my eye. Hockey romances are always a good read, so I thought why not. I was expecting a silly romance with not a lot of heartbreak and I kind of got what I wished for.
I really enjoyed this as a light read, there isn’t too much depth to it, everything is kind of right there in front of you spelt out. There were many cute moments, cheesy flirting, and chapters that just had you squealing in delight.
However, I do think the character’s voices weren’t very defined. There wasn’t much thought put into them, they felt slightly flung together. There were moments where I felt like I was reading about a completely different character than I just spent the last one hundred pages getting to know. At times it felt like their voices were changed just to fit what the author wanted to happen in the plot. Things were resolved too quickly so the plot could be progressed. It meant most of the pages were filled with just cute romance moments, which I am not actually complaining about.
I enjoyed it over all because it was a light read filled to the brim with romance and cuteness. It was just what I was looking for this week. But I most likely will not read this again. The characters were too easily swayed. That strong opinion they had two pages ago, gone now because we are so in love. It’s not something I can handle in large doses. This book is sickeningly sweet which is either a very good thing or a very bad thing depending on how you look at it.
However I don’t think it’s an overall bad book. It was funny, easy to read and cute.