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A review by taylorfennerwrites
On Thin Ice by Julie Cross
4.0
Have I mentioned how much I love this series?? I was so excited when I heard the series would be continuing with On Thin Ice and the yummy Jake Hammond.
Brook is the new girl, the quiet girl with the messed up past and the screwed up parents, neither of which she wants to talk about. But that's okay, because she's really interested in listening lately. Meanwhile, Jake is finally a senior, top of the food chain in school and hockey. Captain is in his sights and he's hoping for a good scholarship. But with senior year comes a hockey team tradition Jake would rather forget about. When the tradition goes horribly wrong and Brooke witnesses the whole thing Jake and Brooke will form an unlikely truce that blooms into trading secrets and confiding in each other and eventually into love.
While they spend more and more time together Jake's life is imploding, his spot on the hockey team seems less important than before, and keeping quiet about things he thinks is wrong becomes increasingly harder while Brooke is just trying to start his life over again.
Overall, I loved this book so much and I was shipping Brooke and Jake from the beginning. The reader also gets to see the couples from the first two books but On Thin Ice is a standalone, you don't need to read the previous books to understand this one (even though I highly recommend Off the Ice and Breaking the Ice!). If you love Contemporary YA Sports Romance, this book is a must for you!
My Rating:
Cover: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (I love the orange color of this cover and the couple depicting Brooke and Jake are perfect)
Summary/Tagline: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 ("Small town boy, meet city girl" is not a bad tagline but it doesn't tell much about the magnificent story inside or the struggles of the characters)
Characters: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (Brooke and Jake are both well-developed characters with real-life struggles that they must overcome. I like Jake's struggle to make his father, his coach, his teammates, and the town proud of him while wanting to tell the truth about what really happened and the guilt and responsibility he feels. Brooke is adjusting to life in a much smaller town, her mother's depression, life with her grandmother who seems all up in her business, and her father's arrest - each in their own would be a major thing but she handles all of it so well.)
Worldbuilding: 🌟🌟🌟 It's contemporary YA romance. There isn't much worldbuilding to develop other than telling the reader that it's a small, hockey obsessed town. Like, really hockey obsessed. Not that it isn't done well, because it is. It's relatable when you live in a small town like I do.
Story: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (This is not just a one-dimensional romance, or a sports romance. Yes, two characters fall in love, yes there is a sport that they both play, but it goes deeper than that. It talks about the weight of expectations, hopes, and dreams of the many being pinned on the few, how snap judgments in a small town can ostracize you whether the talk is true or not, generations of hazing within an organization (in this case a hockey team), and the influence of coaches and other adults on teenagers and how the pressure from them makes you question what is right or wrong.
Overall:
🌟🌟🌟🌟
4.4 of 5 Stars!
Brook is the new girl, the quiet girl with the messed up past and the screwed up parents, neither of which she wants to talk about. But that's okay, because she's really interested in listening lately. Meanwhile, Jake is finally a senior, top of the food chain in school and hockey. Captain is in his sights and he's hoping for a good scholarship. But with senior year comes a hockey team tradition Jake would rather forget about. When the tradition goes horribly wrong and Brooke witnesses the whole thing Jake and Brooke will form an unlikely truce that blooms into trading secrets and confiding in each other and eventually into love.
While they spend more and more time together Jake's life is imploding, his spot on the hockey team seems less important than before, and keeping quiet about things he thinks is wrong becomes increasingly harder while Brooke is just trying to start his life over again.
Overall, I loved this book so much and I was shipping Brooke and Jake from the beginning. The reader also gets to see the couples from the first two books but On Thin Ice is a standalone, you don't need to read the previous books to understand this one (even though I highly recommend Off the Ice and Breaking the Ice!). If you love Contemporary YA Sports Romance, this book is a must for you!
My Rating:
Cover: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (I love the orange color of this cover and the couple depicting Brooke and Jake are perfect)
Summary/Tagline: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 ("Small town boy, meet city girl" is not a bad tagline but it doesn't tell much about the magnificent story inside or the struggles of the characters)
Characters: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (Brooke and Jake are both well-developed characters with real-life struggles that they must overcome. I like Jake's struggle to make his father, his coach, his teammates, and the town proud of him while wanting to tell the truth about what really happened and the guilt and responsibility he feels. Brooke is adjusting to life in a much smaller town, her mother's depression, life with her grandmother who seems all up in her business, and her father's arrest - each in their own would be a major thing but she handles all of it so well.)
Worldbuilding: 🌟🌟🌟 It's contemporary YA romance. There isn't much worldbuilding to develop other than telling the reader that it's a small, hockey obsessed town. Like, really hockey obsessed. Not that it isn't done well, because it is. It's relatable when you live in a small town like I do.
Story: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (This is not just a one-dimensional romance, or a sports romance. Yes, two characters fall in love, yes there is a sport that they both play, but it goes deeper than that. It talks about the weight of expectations, hopes, and dreams of the many being pinned on the few, how snap judgments in a small town can ostracize you whether the talk is true or not, generations of hazing within an organization (in this case a hockey team), and the influence of coaches and other adults on teenagers and how the pressure from them makes you question what is right or wrong.
Overall:
🌟🌟🌟🌟
4.4 of 5 Stars!