I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced reader copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I know we are all a little hockey romance crazy in the world right now, but man oh man did I love this book. I was shocked with how quickly I fell in love with Arthur and Elliot and their grumpy/sunshine dynamic. It’s my favourite trope for a reason! Also, I love when issues are solved through open communication and logical mature, thinking. It was a romance grounded in logic that’s still provided the dopamine hit my brain craves from reading this genre.

Arthur is the coach of the Ottawa otters NHL hockey team. Elliot is the team‘s new physiotherapist. Both are fiercely independent for their own reasons, but can they accept each other’s help to overcome their emotional baggage?

KM Gillis is an author I have followed since I started my bookstagram account a few years ago. I haven’t read her other hockey romances, but I loved this book so much I may have to go back to them. Ice Shy does read as a stand alone but some characters overlap with O Goalie Night and Check the Halls. I already can’t wait for the next book in this series!

I picked up this book after it was recommended on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. It is a retelling of Snow White and it was readily available at my local library. I ended up being very middle of the road in my review.

I found the first 40% of this book very boring and hard to get into. The one bright spot was Anja. I love her passion, intelligence, and sense of self. I found her extremely relatable even if I wasn’t super invested in the mystery of Snow. The plot definitely picked up in the latter half of the book, but not enough that I am going to recommend this as a must read. It would be appropriate for teens and would work well as an overall appeasing bookclub pick, but didn’t blow my mind.

Y’all… I don’t even know where to begin.

This is an extremely spicy alien romance novel and a truly wild read. There’s a bit of plot, but that’s quickly lost to a bunch of sex scenes intermingled with adoring worship of the female main character. It’s like the Sabrina Carpenter song “Tears”, except with a giant blue guy. A sci-fi fantasy fairytale about men being decent.

Although this was a fun book, I simply cannot give five stars to a book with so much SA in the first chapter. However if you are into the weird monster romance genre, this is one to check out. I was lucky to find it at a thrift store, so keep an eye out!