Title: Breaking the Ice
Author: Amy Andrews
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Rating: ★★★★☆
Source: Rachel’s Random Resources
Blurb: NHL hot shot, Nick “Hawkeye” Hawke has 4 months to recuperate from a potentially career ending injury. All he has to do is take it easy and keep things low key. So, looking after his grandmother’s beloved second hand romance bookshop and working very closely with the ruthlessly efficient Samantha Evans is just what he needs right? Wrong!
Career driven Sam has impulsively decided to swap her highly stressful corporate job for a slower pace in her favourite bookshop at the exact time her biological clock has started to tick. And she wants absolutely none of that. But when your boss is a hot hockey superstar and you can’t stop daydreaming of him being your baby daddy, forced proximity takes on a whole new meaning.
With temptation around every book shelf, Nick and Sam find themselves skating on thin ice until they put themselves firmly in the friend zone. But the more they try to resist their slow burn, the more they want each other. How long can they stay in the zone until one of them breaks the ice?
Review: The blurb for this states SPICY… yeah, I think whoever wrote that hook needs to look up was “spicy” means, because Breaking the Ice is not it. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book – far from it – but I’d expectations going in that weren’t fulfilled. Hence the rating.
I adored the premise when I was offered this book and that does pay off. It’s really sweet and I loved the juxtaposition of the tough hockey player inheriting a romance book shop. The sparks between the characters really flew as well.
I found Nick an adorable hero. Sam was okay, but the constant mention of her “chirping eggs” was overdone. I did get the impression she was more into Nick as daddy material rather than lover. That said, the slow burn was genuinely hot. Just not spicy levels of hot.
Andrews’ prose is fabulous, though. Breaking the Ice steams along with the right balance between description and action, and her characters are all very realistic. The setting is cosy – it’s a bookshop, after all – and I did like how Nick and Sam found comfort in each other after their recent losses.
My last thought is that the story ends somewhat abruptly. Either a little more in the last chapter or an epilogue would have finished it nicely. I don’t believe there’s a second book, but maybe?
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