Check out on Goodreads | Buy on Amazon Genres: Adult, Contemporary Romance, Sports Romance
Series: Wynn Hockey #3
Publisher: Loveswept
When your name is Wynn, victory’s the only option...
Everly Wynn: As the only daughter in the Wynn family of hockey heroes, I never shared the ice with my brothers—or the approval they got from my father.And that was before the scandal that ruined my life at sixteen.Now that I’ve put all that behind me and built a successful career, the last thing I need is another hockey player in my life. Especially one like Wyatt Bell. He’s an arrogant, fast-living party boy. I hate how he gets by on his good looks and charm.
So why can’t I get him out of my mind?
Wyatt Bell: Life is short, and you’ve got to live it to the fullest. I learned that the hard way.So on the ice, I always play to win, and on the town, fun and flirting are my game. Because it’s better to laugh your way through the pain than to let them see you’re hurting—but I’ll never stop wishing I could find someone to share the real me with. Something about Everly Wynn makes me think she could be the one. But all she sees is a hockey jock hooked on good times.
If she didn’t take herself so seriously, maybe she would take a chance on being happy.
Disclaimer: I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, but it does not influence my opinion of the book nor the contents of this review in any way.
I loved my first book by Kelly Jamieson: Cross Check. It made me believe the rumors that Ms. Jamieson was, indeed, the Queen of Hockey Romances. She’s known for writing sexy stories with a sweet heat in them that just has you melting and I can say that was certainly the case in the books that I’ve read before.
But about this book in particular… Everly is in charge of the foundation that works with the Condors, the hockey team her dad owns and the luscious Wyatt plays for. After a bit too much bubbly, the book opens with her finding herself in Wyatt’s bed after a night of heavy make-outs, and then Wyatt basically pestering her until she agrees for another date. It was a sweet, his cajoling her to dinner to explore the heat they clearly have with one another. Their chemistry was great and highly enjoyable to read. But their banter was even more so.
When she finally relents, they go out and have a fantastically fun date where Everly lets her walls down. But after a … controversial picture of Wyatt surfaces after the date, the two are “forced” to date for the media to avoid any bad press, a trope you KNOW I love.
This one had two lovely tropes, two of my favorites in fact! A workplace romance, since they essentially work in the same location, even if she’s in the offices and he’s on the ice rink, as well as a fake relationship trope as they had to carry out public dates for the media to photograph and be aware of, even if they were hardly fake. The characters in this one were utterly fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know strait-laced Everly, even if she broke my heart sometimes, due to her sometimes-crippling anxiety, as well as the lovable charmer that was Wyatt. He was a huge teddy bear and was honestly adorable.
“Dinner,” Wyatt breathes. “Thursday night.”
“I thought you were busy Thursday.”
“During the day. My evening is free. Come on, Everly. We can go somewhere nice and insult each other until we’re both so horny we can’t stand it.”
But other than the characters, I had problems connecting to this one. The tropes, for one, are some of my favorites. But they were superficial at best. Well done, but didn’t delve deep into the trope situations like I’m used to. I’m not sure it should count against the book, but it was something that caught my mind at several intervals.
This is the third book in the series, and it cannot be read as a standalone. The sheer amount of characters to keep track of was insane, and since I had no earlier connection to them, I simply wasn’t able to. There’s a chart at the beginning of the book to help, but I honestly didn’t see it until the book was over. It would have been helpful because the author didn’t take the time to go through exactly how everyone fit into the story as much as she probably did earlier in the series. I didn’t understand how it was a “dynasty” family and how her father was “King of Hockey,” even if every one of his family members was involved, he owned a team that, reportedly, had never made it into the playoffs.
The problems in this book seemed rather fabricated, as well. Wyatt is a real fun-loving guy, with a sunny outlook on life that is constantly l looking to live in the moment with a glass-half-full perspective. But we get hints of a “dark” secret of his throughout the whole book, and the whole Owen thing was just a bit … superficial. I feel that if we’d known the truth the whole time, it really lent itself better to the story overall. We could have gotten deeper emotions than just throwaway sentences like “I’ve already let her and Owen down in the worse way possible” in Chapter Two, and not find out why until Chapter 18. And his reaction to the Everly situation just didn’t make sense to me, either. But that’s too spoiler-y to discuss. The family drama that she was having was good content, but I was too busy getting lost in the web of characters to fully enjoy it.
My favorite part of Ms. Jamieson’s books has always been the ice time!! Especially in Cross Check. The hockey games were a total highlight and gave the book that much more depth for me. They were my favorite part! This book didn’t have any ice time for Wyatt :( That was a huge oversight, in my opinion.
Overall, this was a perfectly enjoyable read, it just didn’t fully capture my attention the way I expected a Ms. Jamieson book to. I was there for the characters and the banter, clearly, but the rest I could have just left to the side, unfortunately. They left more questions than enjoyment for me.
Other reads you may enjoy…
Have you read a Kelly Jamieson book? What are some of your sports/hockey romances? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you!
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