There are six books I have rated 5+ stars so far this year, including this book here. Two were rereads. If I just look at those published in 2020, this book here is easily the best of 2020 I've read. If I don't include publication date, and just look at 5+ books as is regardless of when published, this book remains the best I've read this year.

It was fun, exciting, riveting, thrilling. Edge of the seat type book, mostly during the hockey games. You know what sports I've watched in the last 3 or 4 months? South Korean baseball. That's all I've been able to find live to watch. 'Watching' sports through a book read possibly raised the overall rating of the book. Most likely not, though. But I admit it is possible.

Sophie Fourner plays her third year in professional hockey. Her female roommate, who played another year in a European league instead of coming over to play with her in the previous year, starts the book and hockey season on Sophie's team. Regardless of what happens at the next draft, there will be at least two women playing professional hockey, and both will be on the same team.

I think the book opens with the draft, if not, it happens early on. So the total number of women drafted to play in this league is known immediately. The total number who will play that season, well, there are things like minor leagues, so the reader and the characters in the book have to wait for the season to start and then finish to know how many play in the top league.

As occurred in the first two books in this series, this is a book completely from Sophie's point of view, though certain thoughts/feelings/beliefs can be 'picked up on' from the actions and reactions of the people around Sophie. Even if Sophie herself can only observe but not spot every little hint in how people act/react.

More of Sophie's asexual nature gets explored/revealed in this book.

An overall great book with a great cast of characters.

May 24 2020

Rating: 5+ ( )

The third in the series, and a thrilling entry in the series. Sophie is no longer the only woman in the league, and no longer the only woman on her own team. Even though this is her third season, and even though there are other women in the league now, Sophie still has to hide, to show a fake persona to the media, and partially to her teammates. And the pressure has not relaxed, this third year, no it has increased by multiple levels. For multiple reasons.

Her team has made her the captain, but hasn't offered her a new contract (this is her final year on her current contract). Both are pressure points. She doesn't really want to be captain in just her third year, but steps up to the challenge. Others have had contract talks, and or signed new contracts (or been released or traded), but she hasn't even heard the first beginnings of possible contract talk. They make her captain but don't try to sign her to a new contract?

She's promised the longest tenured player on the team, and the oldest player on the team that she'll 'win it all' for him, to get him to return. This is pressure she's put on herself, one because of a promise, and second because she thinks she has to 'win it all' just to get a new contract with the team.

Plus, instead of releasing any of the pressure, more women in the league actually increases the pressure, both on herself while playing (or talking to the media), and while watching the others interact on and off the ice. She doesn't want to 'ruin it' for women in the league (those in it now and those future possible players), and she doesn't want the other current women to do something stupid that will be magnified beyond all rights to show that women just don't belong in the league. Doesn't help that at least two of the other women in the league have a hair trigger temper and are not afraid to show it. She's taking their actions/reactions/etc. and putting it on her own shoulders. Adding even more pressure.

I mentioned in the only other review I did for this series that that book was one of the few, of the 109 sports books I'd read, that was a lot more straight up sports action than anything else (while noting most of those I'd read had strong mystery plotlines in them). Well, this is still a straight up sports book, but a certain amount of romantic tension has been pumped into the book. Seen through Sophie's eyes, but with a hint that Sophie isn't understanding the clues in front of her. The clues that Elsa might be seeing Sophie as more than 'just' a teammate, and the jealousy that gets generated, that spills out. Romantic tension, not a romance.

A good solid thrilling hockey book. ( )