Member Reviews
Thank you to netgally and HarperCollins publishing for the chance to read this E-ARC in exchange for my honest review.
I immensely enjoyed reading this great book, it did start a bit slow but quickly picked up speed. I thought the characters had great growth throughout the book as well, especially Charlie. Going from hockey to winning nationals in figure skating was impressive. I really liked that she wasn't immediately a great figure skater, she worked her butt off getting to where she is. Also I liked the slow burn romance, going from enemies to lovers was a great choice in this book. Alexa and Charlie put their all in on both skating and dating.
I give this book 5 stars. It was well written and a fun read that I highly recommend!
It's a Love/Skate Relationship is a fun and heartwarming YA story about figuring yourself out, realizing you don't have to box yourself in, that you can be whoever you want to be and that those who love you will stay by you 100%.
In this YA romance we follow two girls from different walks of life - one a fabulous figure skater with a famous skater mom and a bright future, one a determined hockey player who is not afraid to hit back. When circumstances push the two together, they slowly realize that their animosity might just be lack of understanding - and that maybe, just maybe, their new figure skating routine might bring them closer not only to a podium but also to each other.
This book is all sorts of sweet while also being laugh out loud funny AND it has such a cute and relatable love story! You can't help but root for our main girls even when things seem impossible. I can't wait to see what this author writes next!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me this ARC. This review will be posted on goodreads August 21st.
I was dreaming about reading a ice skater and hockey player sapphic romance. When this appeared on my feed I couldn't get my hands on it soon enough.
I've devores this book, it's fluid and you don't want to put it down. I was suprised at first that it was writen with one pov and from first person point of view, but it worked really well for the story. I ended up loving that it was from Charlie's pov. The fact that we don't have Alexa's one is not a con at all. Charlie is a sweet and strong character and it was a delight to read her story.
Charlie and Alexa had a good chemistry and were really cute as ennemies to lovers.
Charlie is strong, loving and hotheaded. She has a good sens of fashion and a taste for poor jokes (but still kinda funny)
Alexa is passionate, a big nerd and have a taste for rules breaking.
This romance was so sweet I smiled ear to ear almost for every page. It also had a pretty good ratio between sports and romance, since it's a sport romance I wanted to read a lot about Hockey and Ice skating because it's one of the thing that made me wanna read it.
It made me happy to see a sweet queer love story not being full of angst and sadness (it has angst don't get me wrong but not all the way).
I think the end of the book was a little bit rushed, even if it was as good as the rest of it. After one of the main event appears, the time passes a lot faster, days, weeks and months in one or to chapters with not much description of what was happenning. I think we also needed to see the last hockey match that mirrored the first one, not reading it through fell a little flat for me as well as the dissaperance of the rivals of the main character.
But this wasn't what I liked less from this book. It had something that I really, really don't like to see in any book ever : brands names droping. This is not specifically against this book, but this one had a LOT. It just feel like add breaks and gets me out of my reading experience. Same for pop culture references, even more when unecessary (which was the case here). It also have a tendency of aging poorly. That's why it's not a 5 stars.
Anyway this book was a dream and I would absolutely love to see another romance book in the same universe, still with romances and sport and sooo queer. I would die for Frankie's story or one about Alexa's mom !
I just recently reread Icebreaker and then soon after picked up this one, it gives similar vibes which I liked. This one was definitely YA and sapphic which was something I didn't know I was missing in my life until now.
I stalked Edelweiss for MONTHS waiting for this one to drop, and man, I was not disappointed.
The hockey player/figure skater romance I didn't know I had been craving, this hits all the right notes. Fun banter, found family (and real family), a school rivalry, co-ed hockey, and a main couple that hit the perfect balance of snarky and sweet. I really enjoyed watching Charlie and Alexa's story play out.
All the thrill of competitive figure skating and a sweet blossoming romance, this one had me smiling from start to finish!
The dream: to dominate on the ice. And as a rising ice hockey star, Charlie has every reason to think that she'll be able to do just that. The wrench: an accidental off-ice brawl scuppers her plans for the season, her chance to be seen by scouts, and her practice time. The solution: stay on the ice by standing in as an elite pairs skater's partner for a few months. And the second wrench: they can't stand each other.
I have a thing for ice skating books (also gymnastics—see Sports for Which I Do Not Have the Coordination, and also Sports for Which I Do Not Have the Pain Tolerance), which made this feel like an obvious pick. Charlie's first love is hockey, but she's willing and able to transfer some of that passion to pairs skating, because at the end of the day she loves being on the ice.
The characters are a lot of fun here. Charlie's a teenager, and she acts like it; she has her moments of maturity, but also her moments of, you know, sticking her tongue out and gloating, or making rash choices. "It's on the tip of my tongue to explain to Dad what I learned in bio the other day—how my brain's frontal lobe isn't fully developed, which is why teenagers make risky decisions. But he won't really accept that as reasoning, so I hang my head instead." (loc. 2772*) There's an element of "The Outsiders" at times (though Charlie would belong to the Socs, not the Greasers), and of "Ice Angel" (sort of), but there's also a lot of playfulness.
What I'm less certain about is the realism factor. When Charlie picks up pairs skating, it's without any experience in figure skating, but she leaps in at a very high level and exceeds expectations almost immediately. She works *hard*, but I have to conclude that she has some sort of preternatural ability if she's able to jump in like this. I enjoyed the book enough that I was generally rooting for Charlie to do unnaturally well anyway, but I think I would have found it more realistic if she had had some level of background in figure skating (say, as a kid before her parents/father wised up and put her in hockey instead?) and/or if she'd been called on to train for regionals rather than sectionals (to say nothing of later competitions in the book).
3.5 stars; lots of fun; don't assume from this that you'll soon be seeing your favorite ice hockey stars on the Olympic ice without their teams and their pucks and their padding.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.
This was really disappointing and I'm sad. Just a lot of weird little moments and I didn't really like the main character or the romance.
This one asks for a bit of sports suspension of disbelief that I know not everyone will want to go along with.
It's a fun story and I'm a fan of the butch hockey player becoming a pair figure skaters although I found the book sometimes lacking when it came to adressing and handling the tricky situation of a masculine lesbian being forced to be more "graceful" (and relatively feminine).
It is a cute dislike to lovers story where Charlie slowly realises that Alexa isn't too bad as she opens up. Unfortunately Alexa isn't the most likeable character and the few attemps to soften her character don't fully make up for everything. There are two moments when her boyfriend bullies/makes fun of Charlie for her masculinity and we barely get an apology for the first and her reaction to the second is lacking especially considering how little she fights back against the homophobia directed at her best friend. For a girl with a bi mom, it seems to affect her very little.
It is a single POV story and I regret that we don't get Alexa's side because it would have improved her as a character likely. She's a closeted nerd with no female friends and that's her biggest conflict. She's not that affected by her mom's pressure and seems to have a good with her.
I'm not American so I'm not sure about the whole private vs public school thing.
I really did like the different "dates", they were a good way to build up their relationship and the wedding thing was cute. There was a habit of describing everything they were wearing always which did lessen the impact of the formal outfits imo.
I have very little ice skating knowledge so I can't say anything except believable and I liked having many training scenes, this was one of my favourite parts. There are a few things that weren't believable but I don't mind suspending my disbelief for a little while.
Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins for the ARC. I really enjoyed this book. I was so excited to get this ARC because there is not enough hockey or figure skating wlw romance out there and it made me excited. I'm happy to say that the book definitely holds up to my expectations and then some. Gotta love the long haired butch rep, there aren't nearly enough of them in books out there.
Both Charlie and Alexa were wonderful characters to get to know. I loved their slowburn romance. They didn't start out as rivals necessarily, because they never competed against each other for anything. They were definitely adversaries though. And to see them gradually get over that and learn to coexist and then to support each other and then to love each other was amazing. Alexa does start out with a boyfriend, but there is no cheating or even much flirting while she's with him. It was so sad to learn that Alexa had been led to shun friendships with other women, and didn't have many friends at all. Seeing Charlie's support system of friends and family in comparison...and then watching them all reach out to embrace Alexa as well. Beautiful. Speaking of Charlie's friends and family, they were all super great secondary characters that I enjoyed interacting with and getting to know.
There is a third act breakup. It doesn't last too long in the book, but quite a while chronologically. In fact that period of time was some of the only truly skipped time in the book. Charlie's reason for breaking up don't make sense at first, but with her own introspection later on the reasons behind everything come into focus. Glad to see she got into therapy in order to get better. Charlie does apologize, and while she doesn't grovel she does make a really big grand gesture that really works out for her and Alexa. Glad to see in the epilogue that she's going to continue both sports in the future and doesn't choose one over the other for any reason.
A sapphic, enemies to lovers between a hockey player and a figure skater!? Immediately yes.
I read this book in one day and was hooked immediately by Charlie & her passion and love for being on the ice. Her character development is absolutely fantastic and you really root for her throughout the entire book.
The chemistry, banter, and slow burn between Charlie and Alexa is so good and you really get to experience going from enemies to friends to lovers alongside them.
I also really wish it was possible to watch their figure skating performances somehow because just picturing it in my head was not enough!! (The music & outfit choices were just so top tier)
This book was made for all the young girls who watched Ice Princess on Disney Channel in their childhood and always wished that Casey & Gen ended up together instead.
(We also just need to take a moment to appreciate how adorable & perfect the cover art is, im obsessed & can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy in January!)
THIS IS THE HOCKEY PLAYER AND FIGURE SKATER SAPPHIC ROMANCE EVERYBODY WANTS. SERIOUSLY IT IS SO GAY AND SO GOOD.
It stars a butch lesbian hockey player who has to compete with a figure skater for a chance at a college scholarship. It's practically a love letter to athleticism, hockey, and figure skating. Plus, it has the perfect blend of humor, romantic tension, and the thrill of competition. I seriously, completely adored it.
This was SO cute. If you like the ice skater/hockey player trope but also make it sapphic you're going to love this one!! I admit I was not a big fan of Alexa at all at the start, like girl how do you not see that your boyfriend is a homophobic piece of shit?? but I forgive her. If I had met Charlie Porter in high school I would have fallen head over heels for her real fast. I just had a really good time reading this one! I feel like it actually nailed current teen humor as well. I like how Charlie is going to keep figure skating while playing hockey.