On Thin Ice

To kick off February, I started with this free teen romance book from Net Galley and Entangled Publishing!  On Thin Ice fits its genre well and knows it’s clientele, but it was just an okay read.

Set in Minnesota, the small town of Juniper Falls lives and breathes hockey.  Jake knows this all too well, as one of the star seniors of the high school hockey team.  But when a decades-long hockey hazing tradition goes terribly wrong, Jake is now on the sidelines and questioning his town’s adoration of all things hockey.  Enter Brooke, the new girl who moved to town to live with her grandmother.  She’s an outsider, and she’s dealing with the town gossip about her parents.  But when the school’s new JV girls’ hockey team needs new players, she decides to try being “normal” and play for the team…even though she’s never played hockey before.  Jake is helping coach the team, and he seems to be drawn to Brooke’s quiet strength.  But can she help him stand up for what he knows is right, even if it means going against the entire town?

Again, it’s obvious from the beginning how the story will play out…guy meets girl, they have a connection, conflict ensues, resolve by kissing.  But there is another facet to the story with Jake and the hazing charges.  It’s a conflict that’s applicable today with all the stories in the news about fraternity and sports hazing rituals.  It’s a good moral for the story, but again a very predictable ending.  The one thing that did bother me and I felt didn’t add to the story was the sex scene between Brooke and Jake.  I just don’t feel it sets the right morals for feelings-enhanced teens to see characters say “I love you…now we must have sex.”  There’s also a line between implied sex and explicitly stated sex, like in this book.  Anyways, that was the only part, as a parent and a middle school teacher, that felt wrong.

This book is actually the third in the Juniper Falls series, but the books are all about different kids in town, so reading them in order isn’t necessary.