Books

Book 1,073: Shots on Net (SCU Hockey #1) – J.J. Mulder

Book cover of "Shots on Net"While waiting for the next book in the Jane Austen Murder Mystery series I decided I wanted to read yet another sports romance. Specifically I was looking for the jock/nerd trope and when I googled it, this was one of the ones that came up over and over on Reddit. In general, I’m loath to trust Reddit, but after reading a couple of blurbs I kept coming back to this one.

Shots on Net is the story of Zeke, the small super nerdy demisexual desperately looking for a cheap room, who finds Carter, the stacked varsity hockey goalie who is rich AF, who happens to have a room for rent. And, y’all, the sass in this novel was epic. I honestly wasn’t sure as I started reading if I was going to like Mulder’s style, but this line got me:

‘You look twelve, or something.’
‘And you look like someone who breaks kneecaps for the mafia,’ he retorts. (16)

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Books

Book 1,049: Unrivaled (#3) & 1,050: Crushed Ice (#4) (Hockey Ever After) – Ashlyn Kane & Morgan James

And I’m done with the series—or at least done with what I’m planning to read.

Although, I just found the fifth book and it has a librarian in it! The one thing that I thought was missing from the series was a hockey player falling for someone who WASN’T A HOCKEY PLAYER. It was all too neatly tied up with everyone being hockey players and mostly understanding each other. We’ll see, maybe I’ll come back for that fifth one at some point.

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Books

Book 1,045: Scoring Position (#2) & 1,046: Winging It (#1) (Hockey Ever After) – Ashlyn Kane & Morgan James

Yes—I accidentally read these out of order. I didn’t realize Winging It was the first in the series and only figured it out 1/3 of the way through Scoring Position so of course I immediately had to download the first and start it right after.

Overall, this series was good, and these first two books were well written, and the stories were engaging, but OMFG they were all entirely way too long, or not well paced. More on that later.

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Books

Book 1,029: Racing into Love (Cut to the Feeling #1) – Noah Steele

Oof. Steele is hit or miss for me, and this was a HUGE miss. After reading Heartthrob back in late 2022, I knew I wanted to read more by Steele, but it seems he’s only just hit his stride with Heartthrob, because this one was just not good and the middle one Catch Me If I Fall was mediocre, and I think that had more to do with timing than the book itself.

On the surface I should’ve loved Racing Into Love, awkward bookstore owner Aiden, is forced to face his fears when he meets athlete/race car driver Derrek, in order for them to be together.

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Books

Book 1,022: Kiss and Cry (Love on the Ice #2) – Keira Andrews

I’m pretty sure I stumbled across this one before I realized it was part of a “series” with Only One Bed and apparently a couple other books seem to have been retconned into the series (pretty sure those protagonists are definitely mentioned in this one. At the time I was looking for more diverse protagonists on the covers of the MM Romance novels and this one popped up and here we are months and months later.

Kiss and Tell is the story of the top two men’s figure skating competitors, Canadian Henry (Sam’s older brother from Only One Bed), who is technically proficient and seemingly standoffish and rigid, and American Theo, the party boy of skating who makes up for what he lacks in proficiency with emotions and crowd engagement. So of course this is an opposites attract, grumpy/sunshine, enemies to lovers romance and yup, still here for it.

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