The next installment of the Love on Thin Ice multi-author series tells the best friends to lovers story of Teddy and Harlow. Recent developments of Harlow getting dumped by her boyfriend, quitting her job and Teddy realizing that he has caught feelings for his best friend make for the perfect opportunity for them to redefine their relationship.

Another great addition to this series, Love on Thin Ice, I love that this series is set in the same world but every book is written by a different author, it’s a great way to find new authors. You don’t need to have read the previous books, they can all be read as standalones or in any order.

This was a great read, I absolutely loved Teddy and Harlow as characters, I’m not always the biggest fan of the best friends to lovers trope but it worked really well with these characters. A really sweet, cosy, cute read set in the picture perfect Maple Hills, a real feel good read.

It's rare that you can jump into a series and still thoroughly enjoy the book, but this is one of them !
#6 in the series but #1 to me and I was still able to fall in love with the characters.
Friends to lovers is such a sweet story and will never get old for Me ?

I enjoyed this book very much! It was the first time I read one by this author. I enjoy the friends to lovers troupe and love when the characters have history and a backstory. I also liked that even though there was tension the spice level was low, so I could focus on the story and the characters instead of weeding through unwanted certain acts that many add to their books. I would definitely recommend this book and look forward to reading more from this author.

Love at First Skate is a contemporary hockey romance novel written by Ellie Hall. It is book six in the Love on Thin Ice series. It is not necessary to have read the previous books in order to read this one, but characters do intersect throughout the series.

Summary: Harlow is dumped by her boyfriend and quits her job-all in one day.

She didn’t actually like either, but now what is she going to do?

Maybe winning a free vacation to Maple Falls is just what she needs-especially since her best friend Teddy happens to be playing a charity hockey tournament there.

Teddy has been in love with Harlow for years. Can he finally figure out how to tell her-without losing her friendship forever?

My Thoughts: I liked it, and I didn’t.

I liked the characters and how much fun they had together.

I didn’t like the constant angst from both of them throughout the book of how much they liked each other but were afraid to admit it. It dragged out a little too much.

Overall, though, it was a decent story and goes well with the rest of the series. It was just more of a one-time read for me.

This book was independently published, and I received a free digital copy in exchange for my review. Thank you.

This story is a fun story about best friends to lovers that end up sharing a cabin for a weekend causing the two to realize that maybe there is more to their friendship. Although this is a hockey book, a lot of this book is off the ice and gives you a good small town romance vibe.

I liked how both characters struggled with family issues. Usually, one MC has the family trouble while the other has a great family relationship. In this story, both have issues and I felt that it drew them together better because it gave their story an "us against the world" kind of feel.

ARC Review:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Teddy and Harlow have been best friends since elementary school. As the last two singles in their friendship group their relationship has only gotten stronger. When Harlow wins an all expense paid vacation to the small town of Maple Falls, Teddy tags along. Will their time away prove men and women can in fact be just friends, or will it unlock desires they have been trying to suppress?

Love at First Skate by Ellie Hall is the sixth book in the Love on Thin Ice series. This is a multi-author, interconnected series. While this series features character crossovers, each novel is written as a standalone and does not need to be read in any particular order.

If I had to name one trope as my absolute favorite, it would be friends to more. Love at First Skate is one of the cutest examples of friends to more romance. I adored Harlow and Teddy’s relationship, no matter their status. Their banter was witty, their chemistry palpable, and their ability to better one another was undeniable.

Read this book for:
-hockey player MMC
-grumpy FMC
-forced proximity
-he falls first
-lots of Princess Bride references

Special thanks to Netgalley and Ellie Hall for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this arc!!

What a good book! I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. I loved the main characters! They had great chemistry and worked so well together. I loved how the book just flowed. My first by this author but will not be my last!!!

I was given this ARC read by NetGalley. Here is my honest review! This book was super cute, very easy & simple story to follow. I'm personally not the biggest fan of best friends to lovers trope, but it was still a fun time. I'm very thankful I got to read this book & l'd recommend this to someone who is looking for closed door, hockey romance recommendations!

I have been eating up this hockey series. I love all the writers takes on each of the characters, and it is so nice to read everyone's story. Ellie Hall's story about Teddy and Harlow is perfection. Their friendship is so sweet and I love how in manifests into love. Maple Falls is giving all the vibes in this series and no one should miss it.

Thank you netgalley for an arc of Love at First Skate by Ellie Hall

I have loved read the maple hills series and like the rest of the books, found this very sweet, an easy read and cute! I found parts a little slow but overall a really lovely read and as a whole series something I’d definitely recommend! Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this!

This was a cute story and the continuation in the maple hills series. I am enjoying this series and can't wait to continue. Thank you for allowing me to read and review this ARC

Ellie Hall gave us a fun, friends to lovers, small town, hocky romance. How could it go wrong? Ellie is always so good at developing the emotional connection between the characters and she give her readers the fun banter that leaves us smiling and wanting more. This is a sweet romance and while I read spicy romance, too, I never feel like Ellie's books are lacking because they don't have the spice. She is a great story teller and her characters draw me in ever time. I find myself routing for them and this book was no different.

Teddy and Harlow have been best friends forever, but recently they each have begun looking at the other differently and wondering if there could be something else between them. At the same time, each of them is worried about losing their best friend. Teddy is "The Bear: on the ice, but with Harlow, he is a giant squishy teddy bear and I absolutely LOVED him. The interactions between them are sweet and leave you routing for them as a couple.

This is a fun, easy to read rom-com told in dual POV with a cinnamon roll hockey player and a quirky, roller blading lawyer. This book will draw you in and make you want to finish it in one sitting. It's a perfect, fun fall read.

Friends to lovers.
Small town.
HOCKEY!
Forced proximity.
Genuine FUN!

I highly recommend this book!

⭐️ 3/5
🌶 0/5

Well, this was cute and quick. A comfy filler.

This was Harlow and Teddy's story. He is smitten AF, and she is hesitant. They find friendship and comfort turns into lust and love.

This was readable, but it just didn't quite give me the pining, tension, and mood that I wanted. It felt very predictable and low mood. Like I said, comfy.... cosy.

Did it make me happy? Sure.
Was it soul changing? No.

But still, I recommend to anyone who is already reading the series, you may as well as this one in too.

🏒 Hockey Player MMC
🏒 Friends to lovers
🏒 Comfy Cosy
🏒 Kissing and flirting
🏒 Standalone interconnected

First of all, Thank You Netgalley for the ARC granted. Another great story from this series, and this time We have of of my best tropes to read: Best friends to lovers, and it didn't disapointed! Harlow and Teddy had all my attention troughout the entire journey of the book. Possibly my second favorite story of them all.

This was a fun best friends to lovers, grumpy x sunshine, small town hockey romance. Teddy and Harlow are best friends since childhood who secretly are in love with eachother. Harlow wins a romantic getaway weekend but since she has no one to go with, she decides to go with her best friend. This is where they slowly start acknowledging their feelings. I really enjoyed this book and maple falls is the cutest little town. I just found out this book is part of a series, can’t wait to read the other books as well.

I love sports romances. I love a good series but until this book I had never read best friends to lovers. However, I felt like this fell a little flat. There was just not enough tension or angst. This trope has so many angsty possibilities and this book did not use any. I really like the idea of a series in which each book is written by a different author but there was so much backstory and history that I did not follow or understand. I feel like a few more pages fleshing out other characters would have been worthwhile. I will still go on to read others in this series and other books by Ellie. This book is really for anyone wanting a sweet story with no spice (well, just kisses - not even a closed door scene) and an HEA. 

Big thanks to Netgalley and Ellie Hall for a copy of this book. This is my honest opinion.

🩵 Grumpy-sunshine, friends to lovers, hockey romance 🏒

This is book 6 in the Maple Falls series but can easily be read as a standalone. Although I highly recommend starting from book 1.
Harlow and Teddy have been friends since grade school but made a vow to never date each other’s siblings, they just never actually said they couldn’t date each other. That is until Harlow quits her job as a lawyer and escapes to Maple Falls with her bff Teddy after winning a free romantic getaway for 2. Something is in the air in the quaint little town that makes couples fall in love and never want to LEAF.

This was a shorter story in the series but no less cute. Picture Hallmark meets Gilmore Girls meets the NHL. A perfect fall happy story with 0 spice but a bit of angst.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

2.5 If You Wish Stars ⭐️
Spicy Level: 0/5

I wanted to like this but just couldn’t get into it! I do think it might be a bit of a disservice to this book, having just come off an EPIC friends-to-lovers romance. I know I shouldn’t be comparing, but my brain is a crazy person and doesn’t want to listen to logic...

𝙎𝙮𝙣𝙤𝙥𝙨𝙞𝙨:
Harlow has just broken up with her boyfriend, but she’s not that sad about it. She’s also quit her job because her boss is a total “bro” and takes advantage of her. At a work conference, she wins a romantic getaway where she can choose where to go. She asks her best friend, Teddy, to come along, and they choose Maple Falls—where Teddy has been asked to be part of a charity hockey team, as he’s a professional hockey player and ready to come back after healing from an ACL injury. The two start to realise that maybe they think of each other as more than friends, but don’t want to upset their friendship dynamic... or do they?

𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙁𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨:
I really, really, really want to find a Friends to Lovers where the characters are actual friends to lovers and not already in love with each other and just afraid to tell each other. I think that the problem with this is that both these characters are already irrevocably in love with each other and they need to try and save their friendship while exploring a "new" relationship. They are both scared to ruin what they have.

What I did like though was that even though Harlow has a little past trauma from an accidental almost drowning and some family issues that make it difficult to deal with certain situations, Teddy is absolutely adorable as he helps her deal with this!

It is very clear that these two are best friends, but it's because they were such good friends that I felt like I didn't like this that much. The whole time they're together they keep sharing these inside jokes that half the time I didn't get, and just ended up feeling like an awkward outside third wheel creepily watching their relationship. They would reference things or talk about things that happened in the past or say things that were funny to the two of them but made no sense to me. But besides this, the chemistry between them felt forced or just had to be believed because they had been friends for so long.

The writing also felt very chaotic, and it was very difficult at times to sometimes keep up with Harlow's sporadic thoughts because she 'squirrelled" in terms of ideas. It was very choppy to keep up with what was happening and at times I felt like the main character acted like a 12-year-old girl who'd never seen a boy before, not someone who was nearly 30 years old.

Something that also kinda weirded me out is this felt like Icebreaker Fan Fiction... The TOWN is called Maple Hills... which is the University where Icebreaker and the rest of the books are set. Also, the Charity Hockey Team is called the "Icebreakers" with the theme song "Ice Ice Baby". I know it might all be coincidental but it was a little fishy

𝙏𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨 and 𝙈𝙞𝙘𝙧𝙤 𝙏𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨:
▶ Dual POV
▶ Forced Proximity
▶ Friends to Lovers
▶ Hockey Romance
▶ GrumpyXSunshine but she's the grump
▶ Golden Retriever
▶ Nicknames

Ultimately this had all the formaic things that you would see in a "friend to lovers" but it just felt very cliché and there was no real depth and no real connection. I didn't like the fact that it was basically insta-love and I didn't see much development between the two characters taking place.

This book was perfect! If you are looking for a closed door friends to lovers then this book is for you! The romance was so sweet and the main characters really cared for each other!