Icebreaker by Hannah Grace - A Book Review
Synopsis:
Anastasia Allen has worked her entire life for a shot at Team USA. It looks like everything is going according to plan when she gets a full scholarship to the University of California, Maple Hills and lands a place on their competitive figure skating team.
Nothing will stand in her way, not even the captain of the hockey team, Nate Hawkins.
Nate’s focus as team captain is on keeping his team on the ice. Which is tricky when a facilities mishap means they are forced to share a rink with the figure skating team—including Anastasia, who clearly can’t stand him.
But when Anastasia’s skating partner faces an uncertain future, she may have to look to Nate to take her shot.
Sparks fly, but Anastasia isn’t worried… because she could never like a hockey player, right?
Sparks fly, but Anastasia isn’t worried… because she could never like a hockey player, right?
Genre: Contemporary Sports Romance
Tropes:
- Hockey Romance
- Irritation to Love
- Grumpy X Sunshine
- College Romance
- Found Family
After seeing the TikTok hype of this book and the controversy surrounding it, I had to add it to my TBR and my A-Z Reading Challenge to see what all the fuss was about and whether the spicy scenes were all that.
This is my first read by the author Hannah Grace, which is fitting seeing as this was her first book.
Icebreaker follows college skating student Anastasia Allen in her journey of preparing for the ice skating championships alongside her skating partner Aaron. After the ice hockey’s ice rink is vandalised, Anastasia is forced to share a rink with the college hockey team, including their captain Nathan Hawkins, who she despises.
The two must navigate the sharing of the ice rink as they both prepare for important competitions coming up. After hearing the news of the vandalised hockey rink, Anastasia believes the hockey team to be nothing more than a liability, fearing they could impact upon her time practicing on her ice rink.
When Nathan and Anastasia first meet, Anastasia gives the team a very cold welcome, being furious at the fact that she will have to share her rink. However, as she spends more time with the hockey team, she begins to warm to them.
After their initial meeting Nathan is keen to put their differences aside, so that they can share the ice in a civil manner, with the hopes of also becoming friends – since his roommate Robbie and her roommate Lola have become involved. Despite Nathan’s ideas, Anastasia is not convinced that Nathan’s team were innocent in their rink being damaged.
The story follows the pair in their journey of developing a friendship, turned relationship whilst sharing the ice, that ultimately forces them together. As Nathan learns more about Anastasia, he begins developing feelings for her – only she’s not the commitment type girl, due to her busy schedule that only allows time for friends with benefits.
After learning that Anastasia is single and that Ryan is only her friends with benefits, Nathan is determined to break down Anastasia’s cold exterior.
As the two converse, they see that their hatred is not so far away from lust – leading to the pair to become friends with benefits following a house party that Nathan’s housemates held. When Anastasia and Ryan end their arrangement following Ryan’s new relationship, Nathan and Anastasia embark on one.
Anastasia and her friend Lola share a flat with Anastasia’s skating partner and friend Aaron, who is extremely hostile towards Anastasia and what she chooses to do with her body. This leads Aaron to become extremely sensitive towards Anastasia’s new arrangement with hockey player Nathan, which leads him to bad mouth Anastasia in an attempt to convince her to stop. As Anastasia ignores his comments, Aaron begins to increase his emotional abuse by making comments about her going around the sports team and towards her weight gain.
As Anastasia and Nathan spend more time together following the sharing of the ice rink, they fall into a routine after developing feelings of more than friends. This is quickly halted following an injury Aaron sustains after a rumoured prank by Nathan that leaves him unable to skate. After Nathan is accused of Aaron’s injury, Nate is benched from hockey until Aaron makes a full recovery, only this takes weeks, making Anastasia even more anxious about being ready for their upcoming competition.
After Aaron’s incident, Anastasia decides to distance herself from Nate due to not knowing who to believe – her roommate who she’s known years, or the boy she’s just started seeing.
Ultimately they can’t stay away from each other for long, resuming their routine. This further makes Aaron hostile towards Anastasia’s choices, where at Nate’s house party, he makes comments about Anastasia, stating that she’s using Nate for his money, nobody loves her and that even her adoptive parents use her to fill their trophy cabinet. This leads to a fight to erupt between Aaron and Nate’s protective roommates. Once learning of what Aaron had said about her, Anastasia decides to move in temporarily with Nate.
With Aaron being unable to skate and Nate being benched, Nate offers to be Aaron’s replacement to help Anastasia continue to practice before their competition.
The story follows the journey of Anastasia and Nate practicing Anastasia’s routine, whilst slowly their feelings develop further. As the pair spend more time together, Nate realises that Anastasia is severely under nourishing with her meal plan that Aaron created, expressing that she could be injuring herself. After much persuasion, Nate creates a healthier meal plan that will allow her to have nutrition, only she’s developed issues with food following Aaron’s relentless and nit picking comments on her weight, being that she was too heavy for him to carry her.
As Christmas arrives, Anastasia and Nate return home for the break and meet each others parents after becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. When Nate is away buying Anastasia’s present, Anastasia takes to skating on the lake outside Nate’s home – only she falls through the ice after hitting a weak spot, but luckily Nate rushes to save her.
After they return home and after 8 weeks, Aaron is finally able to return to skating just in time for the championship.
After they return home and after 8 weeks, Aaron is finally able to return to skating just in time for the championship.
When Aaron and Anastasia begin speaking to one another, Aaron reveals his behaviour was due to his dad having an affair that got a girl their age pregnant. Aaron avoids apologising to Anastasia, but offers to pay for therapy sessions together to help them revive their professional partnership, so they do so. In doing so, their therapist suggests for Anastasia to return back to the flat, which when she does, causes a rift between her and Nate, who is not so trusting of Aaron after what he had previously done.
However, Anastasia gives Aaron the benefit of the doubt because she’s left with no other partner to skate with and not forgiving him would mean she’d have to start over again. After speaking with his roommates, Nate comes around and sees Anastasia’s POV and how she’s only sticking with Aaron for the sake of her career, resulting in them to make up.
Anastasia and Aaron begin their skating routine and breeze through it, whilst Nate watches in the crowd unbeknownst to Anastasia. When Nate finds his seat, he comes across a friend who reveals that Aaron’s accident was from a football game, not from a prank that Nate was rumoured to have pulled – proving that Aaron was lying and being manipulative all along. When their routine comes to an end, Aaron deliberately forces a kiss to Anastasia despite her pulling away. This causes upset with Anastasia who furiously ends their skating partnership, much to Aaron’s and their coaches pleads not to. After witnessing everything, Nate meets Aaron with a punch, for forcing himself on Anastasia.
When she reveals her plans to end the partnership, Aaron makes comments that she’s overreacting and she’ll never be good enough for the Olympics.
When Nate’s roommates watch the live events unfold, they make the decision to move Anastasia out of Aaron’s home. After learning the truth about Aaron’s accident, the accusation is removed from Nate’s file.
The story ends two years later, where Nate is playing hockey at the NFL and Anastasia is pregnant with their daughter, following her own Olympian success.
I’m not sure how I managed to finish this book – it seemed like it was going on forever, but nothing was happening to make the story feel like it was progressing.
I went ahead with reading it because it had gotten so many mixed reviews online and I wanted to see where they were coming from. Some people loved it and others said it was straight up porn for which they didn’t understand the hype for it.
I didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t obsessed and absolutely loving it to understand the hype of it on BookTok. I was honestly underwhelmed by it, maybe that’s because college sports romances just aren’t my thing?
It was very slow at the start and even around 70% the way in, which made it very hard for me to be motivated to read further. I always say that the beginnings of books need to have something that gets the reader interested to read on – whether it be the plot or the characters personality. I just felt like there was something massively missing from this book for me to enjoy it. I do enjoy a slow burn romance, but this was just dragged out. I feel like slow burn romances need to have the tension and the back and forth between the characters to built up the slow burn. I just felt like Anastasia and Nate lacked tension between them that would ignite the slowburn, there was no fire between their interactions.
At the start I was confused at who Anastasia was sleeping with because I wasn’t expecting her to be a friends with benefits character. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when I started reading I initially thought Anastasia and Nate were already together. I’m not sure I liked the whole friends with benefits plot at the start.
I did feel like I was back in my 13 year old bedroom, reading Wattpad on my IPad because at times, it made me cringe at the writing style and description. It read like a 13 year old Wattpad story, which I think is why people are saying it’s spicy. It hardly had a plot, it focused way too much on the spice, but the plots would be revisited as if the author forgot about them. The fact that this was the authors first book makes sense and speaks volumes.
All the reviews had said it was popular because of the spicy content, but I didn’t find the spice all that spicy. I’ve read spicier things than the contents of this book. I do believe that those who think this book is 5⭐️ and spicy are those who have only recently gotten into reading.
I also didn’t particularly enjoy the spice in this book and I think it’s because of the story plot timeline. It’s set in college, which I’m way past and I’m also older than them, so I don’t find them interesting. Reading about them made me cringe a lot, as their words felt immature – especially at the spicy/dirty talking parts.
Along with the spice content that made me feel icky, I also felt uncomfortable at times with certain conversations. The part in particular was between Anastasia and her college skating coach, who made comments about Anastasia’s sex life and the size of Nate’s genitals, after she’d seen him wearing tight leggings for ice skating which left nothing to the imagination. I was just honestly sat there like wtf?! Even though it’s only fiction, it just felt unprofessional and weird. It wasn’t the only time a college coach had mentioned something inappropriate between a student.
I think I particularly struggled to immerse into the story because of the college storyline that I’m passed and also because I struggled to connect with Anastasia’s character. Quite frankly, she annoyed me throughout. She didn’t have a back bone towards her roommate and skating partner Aaron. Then despite going to therapy for years, she was unable to see his blatant manipulation and emotional abuse. It just got boring when it was constantly repeated, it felt like she was trying to be a quirky character when actually she was just being irritating for her ignorance.
It felt like the story just went round in the same circle, rather than progressing.
I’d say the only thing I remotely liked about it was the ice skating aspect, but that was only towards the last 20% of the book – I had no other interest in it during the start.
I don’t think I’ll be jumping to read the other books of the story – the subsequent storylines were hinted in Icebreaker, but they weren’t intriguing enough for me to put myself through another 400 pages.
I hate leaving negative reviews because I read for enjoyment, so I want to enjoy every book I read.
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️
Georgia
♥
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