Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Humor: A bit
Perspective: First person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: Not too long in….about 5% or Chapter 3 of the book
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, nine years later
Format: bought e-book

Should I read in order?
This is the first in Khabra’s Off the Ice series.

Basic plot:
To complete her research paper, Summer is forced to work with a dreaded hockey player. Aiden must do some college community service by volunteering himself for a research paper after his coach confronts him on a mistake.

Give this a try if you want:
- contemporary romance
- book includes a playlist!
- college setting
- touch of enemies to lovers (more on the heroine’s side – she doesn’t like hockey players)
- hockey player and the psychologist
- hero makes the heroine tea
- plenty of back and forth banter
- higher steam – 5-ish (I was kinda lazy with counting) scenes with some praise

Ages:
- hero is 21, heroine is 20

First line:
She’s holding a gun to my head.

My thoughts:
I am sad I struggled with this book! I wanted to like it but I just couldn’t get into it and I kept setting it down and forcing myself to pick it back up. Like I think I started this in April and am just getting around to finishing my review now (August)...I think I finished a week or two ago.

I did love the steam in this one. The scenes were really great and I loved the hero’s dirty talking. But I never grew to love either main character really.

I’m not the biggest fan of enemies to lovers anymore, so I think this will be a hit with others. I just didn’t feel the tension off their animosity and the heroine refusing to give the hero an inch because of her issues with her father got rather tiring to me. I felt like I was on a hamster wheel repeating and just wanted off. I was ready for this book to be over way before it ended. I think I could really like another book by this author with a different plot though!

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts: Any mistakes/typos are my own

Soft tendrils frame her face, and I can’t help but notice how pretty she looks. She would look even prettier on her knees, looking up at me with those pink lips in a perfect O.
Jesus, I need a cold shower.
---
“There’s no lifeguard. If you drown, I’m not saving you.”
He feigns offense. “I’m your research; you can’t let me die.”
“A few casualties along the way won’t hurt my application.” He throws me a dark look that pulls a smile from me. “Last one in the pool has to pay for the other’s dinner,” I say before taking off. Just as I’m about to hop off the edge and dive into the pool, Aiden’s arm hooks around my waist, and we spin into the water, his back hitting first. I’m engulfed in chlorine-treated water, and him. When we break through the surface, I’m still trapped against his hard body.
“I don’t lose, Preston,” he whispers against the shell of my ear.
---
When warm fingers reach to lift my chin, my stomach flutters. “Did you mean what you said?”
This is no time to be a coward, Summer.
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
His tense shoulders relax, and he grins. “Say it again.”
“Hell no.”
“Come on. One more time,” he goads.
I shake my head more seriously now. Aiden shrugs and turns to leave. I fight the urge to roll my eyes when I grab the sleeve of his T-shirt to pull him back to me. He comes easily, not even trying to hid the big smile on his stupidly smug face.
I breathe a dramatic sigh. “I want you to fuck me.”
Aiden’s eyes light like a kid’s on Christmas. “Was that so hard?”
---
“Maybe you have a headache from your hair being in a death grip.”
“That’s how I like it,” she declares.
I raise my brows, making her roll her eyes. “I like it down.”
She snorts. “Good to know. I’ll throw out all my hair ties because Aiden Crawford likes it when girls wear their hair down.”
Wrapping the bandage around her ankle, I glance at her. “Not girls. You.”
---
“If you want it, you’re going to come to me.” He lifts my hair from the shirt, pushing it back. “The next time I have you, it won’t be to prove something or to win some competition. It’s going to be because you know the only guy that can satisfy you is me.”
 

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- heroine struggles with some parental issues with her dad
- heroine does kiss someone else in the book and it’s after she was intimate with the hero (I would say infidelity because they are not in a relationship...)

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex: 

  Condoms used 

 
Hows the consent? 

  It’s good – the hero asks multiple times 

 
Pregnancy/children? 

  I don’t recall pregnancy being talked about, condoms are used. There are children in the epilogue. 

 
30% - brief kiss
37% - kiss between the hero and heroine (there was a prior kiss between the heroine and a side character), breast play, oral for her
46% - kisses in the truck
49% - 🔥 bj, oral for her, missionary
53% - 🔥 her on top
60% - 🔥 69
65% - 🔥 sex in the bar bathroom
72% - 🔥 fingering for her on the ferris wheel
84% - oral for her but it cuts off and is very short