Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - Icebreaker (2024)

Content Warnings

Content Warnings

I really enjoyed the story of finding love where you don’t expect it, friends who are there for you no matter what, toxic people getting their comeuppance, and that while having a team/partner beside you is great you can also do things solo and be okay.

That being said, I found this book to be too sexy? Like there was so much sex it was eventually just background noise. Definitely not an audiobook to listen to with the kids around, but by about half way I could have skipped through the sex scenes and still enjoyed the book.

All sex aside, I loved the communication between all the characters (friendship and romantic relations) and the amount of times Nate and Stas mentioned therapy and how beneficial it was.

Content Warnings

Content Warnings

Content Warnings

Content Warnings

DNF @ 46%
If I could give this book negative stars I would.

Someone please point me in the direction of the plot, I seem to have lost it entirely.

The Writing:
11% in, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like this book. I really should’ve trusted my gut. If you like books holding your hand through the entire process, this book is for you. There is not one iota of *showing* in this book. There is literally only *telling*.
There’s no description of any surrounding scenery, people’s emotions or expressions; there is only the brief description of each characters appearance when they’re introduced, but you better have a notebook handy, because it’s up to you to remember who is who after that. At one point there wasn’t even a physical description, the FMC was meeting the hockey team members and eventually just said something along the lines of “I mean how else do you describe a hockey player other than big”… and that was it.
Good luck trying to remember who is who and what they look like, because there is about 50 characters that have no reason being there. The author went about describing a group of people at one point leaving an auditorium because they were not-so-subtly called out and shamed by a school admin giving an assembly. We got to know each one of their names, what their situation was, and where they lived… and that’s it. That was the first and last time I had ever heard of those characters.
There is also an obscene amount of time skips, not altogether too long, but the POV character will just offhandedly mention having a conversation with another character “off-screen” so to speak, quite a lot. And it’ll vaguely describe whatever the conversation was, even if it was conflict that could’ve been added to the non-existent plot, it was just swept under the rug as an “oh ya and this happened, anyways…”

The “Plot”:
Now don’t get me wrong when I say this, I in fact am a large consumer of smut and plot-light romance books and I do thoroughly enjoy them; but believe me when I say that this book seriously has *zero* plot.
The “conflict” is the hockey and figure skating teams have to share one ice rink because the other one is broken or something. But they very quickly compromise and are able to build a schedule for both teams without really effecting anyone too much; all within about one chapter. Now everyone is fine, they get their practices in, they just see one another more often.
This all happens and is “resolved” within about the first 15% of the book.
The only other conflict I witnessed other then meaningless drama Anastasia created, was Aaron claimed to be beat up by Nate and he wouldn’t be able to skate anymore. Everyone backed up Nate when he said Aaron was lying, Aaron had literally no proof of anything, but Anastasia believed him. Aaron was skating the next chapter.
So like, why is this book 429 pages?

The Characters:
Jesus Christ the characters. None of them are interesting, the ones you remember are either extremely unlikable or kiddie pool shallow. I know some people are saying Nate and Henry are the only saving grace, and I could agree with that if they were actually well written characters.
Let’s go through the ones I can remember:

FMC/Anastasia: rude, mean, no reason for any of her actions. I get what the author was trying to do, I really do. I struggle with some abandonment issues myself, and I could see how some people would want to avoid it at all costs by being non-committal. What I don’t understand is her being able to pick and choose. She commits to being in a figure skating partnership and *LIVING WITH* one of the most annoying and abusive characters I’ve ever read (more on Aaron later). But can’t commit to people who care and want to support her in a healthy way. Ex. She’s about to go to funky town with our MMC Nate. Nate, responsibly speaks up and says he doesn’t want to have sex with her while they’re both drunk, but that he does want to have sex when they’re sober. Anastasia cries, pretends to go to sleep, but tries to call an Uber after Nate falls asleep. The next day Nate feels like sh*t, and Anastasia is mad at him. She just seems to be mean, lash out, tease, or cause drama for no apparent reason, yet claims she likes and is good at talking about her feelings. K.

MMC/Nate: hockey guy. Seems nice. I would hang out with him I guess. Deserves better in the love interest, and the writing department.

Aaron: blatantly harassed, belittles, and emotionally/mentally abuses and manipulates people. But *NO ONE* calls him out for it. And if they try to, or start to, Anastasia stops them, or gets mad at them. This man just flat out lies and Anastasia believes it because…?

Lola: stereotypical theatre nerd. Can’t remember anything else.

Ryan: f*ck buddy of Anastasia. Actually might be the only side character I thought was written well. Not counting how he slept shirtless with a woman who wasn’t the girl he was dating. Don’t care if it’s right at the beginning of the relationship, if you’re gonna write sus things in your books, those characters better be explaining themselves.

Robby/Bobby: Robby is in a wheelchair but it’s only ever mentioned once. And he was kinda a dick to his best friend to threw him a sick birthday party. I have no idea who Bobby was, but their name kept popping up and I kept getting confused.

Rose/Briar/Kitty/Summer/Aurora/Liv: random women whose only purpose was to sleep with a guy. I think one of the names is unintentionally made up by me, and one is from the synopsis of the second book. I can’t remember which for each.

Henry: oh dear. Let me preface this by saying I am a professionally diagnosed autistic woman. Now, how do I put this without going into a long diatribe about autistic representation in media. I don’t think I can. So I’ll try to keep it to bullet form;
- he is an autistic-*coded* character. And a poor one at that.
- His only reason for existing in this book is to be autistic.
- He has no personality other than “I am blunt and speak my mind no matter what”
- Every other characters reaction to him flip-flops between “omg he’s so cute/quirky!”, “wtf he’s such a dick”, and “we must protect him :,(“
Safe so say I was not happy with this representation. If you’d like to read well written romance books about autistic characters, please read Helen Hoang.

Content Warnings

Content Warnings

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Content Warnings