Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Icebreaker

Anastasia is a rude figure skater. Nate is a large hockey player. As college jocks, they spend a good amount of time partying and hooking up. Anastasia is the type of girl who calls her closest guy friend with benefits (to be fair he is very nice) her best friend even though he disappears halfway through the book and she very clearly has an actual best friend. Also she's in an emotionally abusive non-romantic relationship with her skating partner, which is actually an interesting idea. Nate is rich hockey man wish fulfillment with Daddy issues that are thrown in so he isn't too perfect. This is enemies to lovers in the sense that Anastasia is super mean to Nate for ridiculous reasons until she can no longer resist his hotness, which to be fair is usually how this trope works.

The last time I read a book about college students, I decided I should not do that again, and those instincts were correct (for me). These people have weird, unconvincing baggage and occasionally concerning behaviors.

To be clear, there is a good amount of front loaded steamy content in this book. Do not be fooled by the cutesy cover. The characters' relationship is very physical and, toward the end, very affectionate, which is nice because I don't really see it in their personalities. Hot, boring party kids deserve love too; I maybe didn't need a whole novel about it. But I did read the book very quickly and somewhat enjoyed it, so joke's on me!

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elsalouisesinger's review against another edition

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challenging fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

Don't be fooled by cute covers, kids :|

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firedew's review against another edition

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A bunch of college kids acting like idiots and having sex with people they barely know. No thanks.

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mimo_'s review against another edition

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Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

i sacrificed myself to read this book because no one else in my group was going to. and it truly was a sacrifice. this book fucking sucked! this is no hate to the author but I genuinely did not enjoy this book nor do i care in the slightest for the characters. nathan is absolutely not "man written by a woman" as stassie put it even if he does wear gray sweatpants. it felt as though there was no actual plot here aside from how often can the main characters sleep with each other (57 times to be exact) within ~400 pages. it was as though that was their main trait, and skating/hockey were secondary to their personalities, if you can call them that. how is this a "college romance" when school is mentioned all of three times in the book i am unclear. ask anyone what i read and it's majority romance but when i tell you that this book is not it. i saw no reason to have getting laid brought up that many times it's never that serious

and dont even get me started on the gru scene

. to each their own i know this book is popular but I'm unsure what for. maybe it's because i had my tumblr and wattpad eras in the past (yet they've never been this smut focused?) but this feels like a book for people that didn't experience tumblr in 2012. some of the time jumps made no sense to me either and the fact that fmc is so dense. there wasn't much of a redeeming factor in this book but i did like when

aaron

got punched in the face because it was deserved. anybody under the age of 16 reading this that thinks its peak literature can argue with the wall. both mains felt kinda stupid to me and maybe if they had attended as much school as often as they fucked they'd have some more common sense, but i suppose we can't have it all.

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rhysa's review

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sara33bear's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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wondahwoman's review against another edition

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funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

While I thoroughly enjoyed the romance between Anastasia and Nate, the main source of conflict throughout the story felt a bit forced to me.

Spoilers for the antagonist/conflict below:

Stassi’s skating partner, Aaron, is nothing short of emotionally abusive, and it seemed unrealistic to me that Stassi would forgive/excuse SO MANY of his actions. Even towards the end when she had become disillusioned by all of his manipulative behavior, she continued excusing awful things. I wish there’d been more development into why she was so deep under his spell after having only been his partner for two years.

I appreciate that the drama between the two love interests was very minimal (see also: no third act breakup!) but the conflict that was there made it hard to finish near the end. It was worth it for the romance, but I wish the antagonist had been more thought out.

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