The One Where Grace Ranks a Dozen Hockey Romances

In case you weren't aware, hockey romances are one of the most popular subgenres across commercial fiction, for a few reasons.

For one, romance as an umbrella pretty much keeps everything else afloat within publishing (and attracts a slew of new readers.) It is a money-maker, and usually pretty heart-warming.

Since I've started reading more romance this summer, I've veered in two directions, mostly: cowboys (because I'm on a Southern/country vibe in general and ranch picks are popular), and hockey—because it's the main one.

And after Beartown, I'm on a hockey-specific kick anyway. (On a related note, the former title also made me once and for all to be a bandwagoner and start actually watching hockey. I need a sport to care about, and my choice is arbitrary anyway.)

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From this year and previously, here's some sporadic commentary on some of the hockey romances I've read.

The First Original Wave of Hockey Books I Read

Icebreaker by Hannah Grace

Icebreaker is one of the defining hockey books that made this all popular. TikTok sensation, etc. etc. Main hockey boy in rivalry with the figure skater annoyed at having to share the rink. Y'all do the math. It's one of the first sexy, campus, new-adult books that shapes the hallmarks and tropes of the hockey subgenre (depicted below), so if you read it after a bunch of others, a lot will seem familiar.

I like the book well enough. It was one of the originals, which is why you'll still see it on every Barnes & Noble table. By now, other books have come out that handle specific plot elements better individually, but Icebreaker is perfectly pleasant. As a whole, I think each of the Maple Hills books are far too long and just start throwing in twists so they can fill pages, but there's plenty to like about them too. It's a good one to start with to figure out which direction you'd like to go in if continuing with these kinds of books.

The Deal by Elle Kennedy

Admittedly, I've read a few Elle Kennedy titles that I did not like, so I may have to decide that she's just not an author I should read again.

I have plenty of pet peeves around her plots and execution that just drive me up the wall (I frequently think she backs herself into a corner and has to just shove fixes together), but people love The Deal and credit it as one of the musts of this subgenre. I think other books with the exact plot do it better, but do with that what you will.

One small aspect I did appreciate about The Deal is that the main love interest very much acts and talks like an immature college boy. He feels young. That's never been my vibe attraction-wise—even in college—but I love it because it's so true to reality. The entire time, I was rolling my eyes at some of his commentary, but also I genuinely appreciated that he acted 19 and not 35 for a new adult campus book, because so many of them default to being the author's age rather than the character's.

On a similar (but odd) note, a friend and I chatted about how the author could never quite commit to what she wanted the college vibe to be: virginal or Euphoria-style. In one scene, a couple is making out half-naked in the corner of a casual gathering and nobody thinks twice about it; in the next scene, her narrator wears a knee-length dress to frat party. It goes zero to a hundred in all ways.

Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

This one has the most ridiculous premise, based on the smirky joke of middle schoolers claiming they met boyfriends at camp or whatever. "You don't know him; he lives in Canada." Some classic tropes in this one: dancer main character (for some reason, also popular in this genre.) Becomes a nanny for a single dad. One reviewer pointed this out, and once I noticed, I couldn't not: the main character only refers to the love interest by his full name, every time.

Respectfully, the conflict in this one was annoying, but I enjoyed the amount of Canadian references. I wouldn't reread, nor would I maybe go back and read, but I didn't dislike it either.

READ MY FULL REVIEW.

Some Hallmarks of the Genre

Sports romances offer some indulgent escapist benefits to that population, so it's no wonder they're so popular. The love interest is, by necessity, rich or about to be. An athlete's deeply passionate about one thing and under plenty of pressure. Hockey specifically makes for some gloves-off fights on the ice that lead to dramatic chapters where the man in question is either whaling against the ex who broke his gal's heart or getting a black eye tenderly nursed by the protagonist after potentially detonating his career. Classic.

Analytically, the reason hockey romances dominate over football, basketball, or other sports is pretty bleak: hockey players tend to be white and affluent—and so do many of the readers driving this trend. Certain segments of white women are statistically less likely to pick up books about people of color. When I'm done with my hockey kick, I'll read other sports romances so as not to fall into this, but I'm painfully aware those titles won't get the same marketing push or buzz for such a shitty reason. As lovely as hockey is!

And more hockey romances breed more hockey romances, etc. Within the subgenre, different books have different proportions catering to reader preferences. For example, Unsteady talks a lot about the sport experience itself, whereas Mile High is just like "and then we had a game." Although I know little about the sport, I want the realism and the passion of them committing to a specific sport, not one that’s interchangeable.

If you read more than two or three of these types of titles, you'll notice plenty of overlap—for better and for worse, romance is a genre that rewards packaging. Readers like what they like, so certain scenes or tendencies reappear throughout various series. You're essentially just picking your preferred cast and proportions and voice between authors.

While actual tropes and characteristics vary, the hockey books also tend to include cartoon covers and have a reputation for being extremely graphic in their hookup scenes, hence the rising (and accurate) perception that many "BookTok books" are sexual by default. They're explicit for sure. "Steamy." This may be your vibe; it may not. I don't talk about all that on the Internet so won't go into detail, but certain books at the top of the charts focus more on the connection and plot while others are more about the...heat. I can give various opinions on those aspects of the books if you run into me in person, but not to be chiseled into eternity on this here very-public Internet.

So: All the Hockey Books I've Read This Year

This summer, I was on a hockey kick from Beartown, so I did seek them out specifically and decide I wanted to read the main titles people were talking about. I'm not immune to the charms of books about marrying professional athletes and being lavished with love and attention. Plus, I love any book where a main character is passionate about something, and sports tend to be an easy shorthand for that preference.

I still put some down a few pages in that don't grip me, but as a whole, I think I've done a decent job scouring the market to wade through the top, talked-about titles and collecting my thoughts. I feel completely blind in this, actually, because of the similar branding, so always have that moment of "Is this what normal people feel like at the bookstore?" when trying to find my next pick. I'm used to being fluent in analyzing my taste and matching it to what's available in front of me, but the hockey titles blur together for me. So, some wins and some losses:

Collide + Spiral by Bal Khabra

This series has made its way around my friends in Hawai'i, and I've been informed the "spicy" scenes have also been read aloud at the beach when the guys wanted to know what the gals were poring over. I like Bal Khabra for packaging tropes well but not really throwing in anything extra. The books, solidly, do a good job.

I read Spiral first because I snagged it from the Montreal airport then backtracked to Collide; the main character was très "not like other girls" and I thought the big conflict of the former—that the love interest had committed to celibacy—was treated with far more drama than the situation justified, but it's a sweet book with a great payoff.

In Collide, the couple got together way earlier and the tension sort of faded early, so the latter half just read like bonus scenes.

They're both nice, engaging reads with no surprises or annoyances. Sometimes you need that, but you might also prefer to be gripped more. If you like to read in the way many readers in this genre do—"I want 'this specific scene or trope' conveyed well"—then Bal Khabra may be the writer for you. I'd read another by her and I'll probably really like it.

Face Off by Chelsea Curto

I liked this one, and appreciated the reality-bending hook: a girl playing in the NHL. (There's an author's note explaining what liberties she took on that front too.) It was cute and relatively engaging. In fairness, I read this after reading about five "he runs the NHL and she takes him by surprise" books in a row, so there's a whole formula by now that starts to fade into the background:

Book begins with the guy giving a speech to his hookup of the night before being all "you know the drill, I don't do phone numbers or dating" and possibly getting their name wrong; she's upset because she thought she'd be the one to change his mind, but he's secretly a softie doting on his niece, sick relative, or perhaps a nearby charity—which is why he can't do distractions. Until some "not like other girls" girl—either via proximity i.e. working for the organization in some capacity or via some shake-up interaction in which he's humbled by the spunky personality who seems to see through him—makes him want to change everything.

So this one was no different, but it was perfectly acceptable. Because it was just acceptable (and I didn't feel like I was entirely convinced by them being obsessed with each other more so than the slew of other titles), I won't read the rest of the series but found it a cute addition to the subgenre overall. I wouldn't prioritize it, but throw it in with the group, sure.

Update: I lied and I did read the rest of the series on a flight from the East Coast back to Hawai'i. Series like this are great for passing a giant chunk of time. Overall, I'd say Face Off and Hat Trick are the weakest of the bunch, but the middle two were great and the others are still likable. The series itself is dripping in corniness and often feels incredibly preachy, but it's entertaining for the subgenre. The ranking is:

1. Power Play

2. Slap Shot

3. Face Off

4. Hat Trick

Unsteady by Peyton Corrine

I was absolutely shocked by Unsteady—in a good way. As mentioned, a lot of people pick a subgenre and devour everything possible within it, seeing similarity to other books as a good thing. I tend to not be that way, preferring novelty and originality, but I understand why replicability is a good thing in romance. And sure, yeah, I've started to appreciate that more—the ability to sail through a plot having seen most of it unfold before, the rhythms scratching an itch like a comfort TV show on in the background for noise. But: if I'm wading through a handful of tropes and deciding which books do it best, Unsteady is easily the winner.

And the romance and connection actually felt earned and built over time, so I was rooting for them. I'm a skeptic when it comes to plenty of romance books, simply because the way I get to know people is so much slower than the instalove depicted in these types of reads. The cynic in me points out they're often just in lust. But Unsteady was better about this because you saw them constantly readjusting and recalibrating over time while still getting the obsessive spark.

We have attributes we've seen before: frazzled ice-skater with a toxic coaching dynamic (see: Icebreaker), the hyperindependent girl single-handedly keeping her family afloat (see: Spiral), etc. but all conveyed in the most tense, delicious, actually-earned way that makes this a great book that happens to fit into the constraints of a hockey romance rather than a laundry list of hockey romance traits scrambling to form a cohesive plot. Too often, I'd say most books feel like the latter—good enough, but good enough for a particular flavor of story you want to read at that given time, not enough to stand on its own against the rest of the reading list.

The cast wasn't just there as cardboard cutouts referenced so you know who's coming in the next books either. (If you've read within the hockey romance subgenre, you know exactly what setup I'm talking about.) You got the sense that everyone had a lot more layers to them you only barely scratched the surface of, so the book itself felt evocative and hinting at more depth.

The book's darkness reminds me a lot of Spinning Out, an older show on Netflix about a spiraling skater coming back from a near-death incident on the ice. It's similarly painful and angsty, but in an earned way that shows the cost of juggling it all. It goes deep where it needs to, and the proportionality on a page-by-page or paragraph-by-paragraph level (a rhythmic quality difficult to teach) was fantastic. Easily one of the best books of my year, and not just in terms of being on a fun subgenre kick.

Mile High by Liz Tomforde

I really could not stomach the awkward dialogue in this one, and I was admittedly expecting more from the plot itself: bad boy hockey player falls for the flight attendant on the team plane. She has a no-fraternization policy for work; he's tired of playing up his escapades in the news to renew his contract, and has the ever-so-predictable angst of worrying people won't love his real self when he stops being attention-grabbing.

At the end, I still felt like Zaden and Stevie didn't see all that much in each other. He was all "she's so sweet and different" and she was like "he's different from how he is in the media" but that was about all I got from it. It was pleasant enough—also too long, but plenty of these kinds of romances have the same pacing issue. I gave it a shot because a friend told me to stick with it, and I didn't dislike it at all, but I probably won't continue with the series either just because it wasn't quite enough for me either. In many ways, it was so supremely obvious and telegraphed that I had a hard time believing the story.

I enjoyed the body positivity plot, thought the media/PR angle felt majorly exaggerated to the extent I had trouble believing it, and thought certain "wow, [other person]'s so amazing" moments were eye-rollingly corny, but I also see why it appeals. Many aspects of the love story were corny, and characters monologued and used therapy-speak to the extent that it constantly felt like you were being beat over the head with the "love yourself" (or similar) point every time they had one. It was okay, and I was expecting more dynamism.

Behind the Net by Stephanie Archer

This entire series was a winner for me! So fun, vivid, and—yeah, hot, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Out of this whole list, I'd say go for the Behind the Net series if you want a beach read that'll have you smiling and for Unsteady if you want the angsty, drown-in-you type mood.

I devoured this series—the Vancouver Storm series—in about 48 hours. I say this frequently, but it's rare a book makes me laugh out loud too, and there were multiple moments in this series that had me actually cracking up. (Darcy in the bar with her computer in book three. I was dying.)

The chemistry sizzled, the scenes were creative and specific, and although Archer has certain crutches that reappear, her formula works and had me hooked. Lots to love that I will tackle in a full review, but I'd say most friends of mine seeking a beach read this summer would be extremely happy picking up this one. They're very much all mutual yearning, so you're aware the whole time that the love interests are pining for each other—which might irk you if "miscommunication" is your pet peeve—but I'm picky about that too and honestly felt like the situations these books presented were all appropriately realistic and/or larger-than-life in why characters avoided getting it all out in the open.

Rankings:

1. The Fake Out

2. Gloves Off

3. Behind the Net

4. The Wingman

Overall, I think I struggle with some similar romance books feeling copy-paste to the extent that you could just MadLibs your way through the characters and dynamics (and thus they all feel flat), but Behind the Net offers a wide array of color and detail and vibrancy that made me adore each book independently without defaulting to having to be generous in my standards. (Sometimes, I'll be in the mood for that i.e. I'll read a certain topic of book even knowing it won't be up to my preferences craft-wise, but it just makes me happy to have a book that checks all my boxes anyway.)

The layers, characterization, etc. were all A+. I can't wait for the next! So much to love, even when certain choices feel familiar.

More to come, I'm sure. If y'all see me at a sports bar in a jersey in the fall, mind your business. Would welcome any recs here too.