Lies of omission, hockey romance, and second chances
Plot:
NHL star Rook meets grad student Lainey on a plane to Alaska where both of them are going to escape the realities of their lives. When complications arise, Lainey and Rook wind up spending their month-long trip living together and falling into bed with each other. When an emergency cuts their trip short, they both realize they forgot to exchange phone numbers.
A year later, the two run into each other in an unexpected place and the secrets they kept from each other threaten to ruin them before they even begin.
Review:
I was so excited to start this one considering how much of a fan I usually am of hockey romance books (cough cough the Off-Campus Series by Elle Kennedy). Unfortunately, this book just didn’t do it for me.
I will say I liked the beginning of this book. I loved how the two main characters, Lainey and Rook, met on a plane on their way to Alaska and their instant connection was endearing. Another thing Hunting did well was show the effects powerful anxiety had on Lainey and the coping tools she used. I think it is so important to show how anxiety can affect someone's life and their relationships.
But that’s about where it ends for me. When circumstances led to them spending their month-long vacation in Alaska together I was excited to see their relationship develop, but all I got was vague sex scenes with little dialogue. For the life of me once they left Alaska I could not understand how they knew anything about each other to feel so obsessed with each other. I know most romance books are pretty insta-love, but come on, this one was just too unsubstantiated.
I can’t imagine how they forgot to exchange numbers after this lust-driven month together, but alas, they did and it set up their accidental reunion a year later. Their run-in felt too coincidental to me even with it being the obvious step needed to continue the storyline. What both characters expected to be an over-joyous reunion, turned sour quickly when they both realized they were hiding things from each other - Rook, his true identity/profession, and Lainey, something a little bigger that I won’t spoil. But both of their “lies” weren’t necessarily lies, more omissions of truth that I thought were over-dramatized so much that it almost didn’t make sense why they were even considered lies or why they were made such a big deal. Other than to just create conflict where there didn’t need to be, of course. Truly, there is nothing I hate more than unneeded conflict and I just couldn’t wrap my head around why Lainey specifically was so angry at Rook for telling her his name was RJ (an actual nickname of his) instead of Rook.
After their rocky reunion things got pretty domestic, for lack of a better word, between Lainey and Rook and the storyline turned into a snooze-fest. Neither character was especially likable, Lainey was fine but just boring and Rook was overprotective and pushy in an unattractive way. By the end of the book, I still felt like not only did the characters barely know anything about each other, but we barely knew anything about them.
All in all, this book felt ~too~ insta-love, too coincidental (even for a romance book), and all of their “conflicts” were insignificant things made complicated just to create conflict.
Rating:
2/5 Stars