Imagine being in like the fencing team or something who doesn’t even know where the ice rinks are, and you get forced into a meeting because someone damaged the ice. I would be so annoyed I’d support the vandal out of spite
Right?! Like the swimmers are over here with their 25 meter pool they don’t need anything else. You think they WANT to take a giant ice bath? Nah. On behalf of swimmers, we also support the vandal out of spite.
Thinking about how Aaron had trouble lifting her and the meal plan with not enough protein to build muscle and thinking about how Aaron would have been a much more interesting character if instead of making him a "just because he is" villain with no real depth or motivation his arch had been about HIM being the one with an eating disorder and his and Anastasia's control issues being sort of co-dependent (like with like their JOINT meal plan) and stuff instead of just being...evil with randomly shifting motivations.
That's actually very intriguing and makes Aaron WAY more complex. It also ties into them being friends for so long, the whole co-dependent aspect of it, along with being skating partners. Honestly, a toxic male-female friendship would be a lot more compelling than romantic jealousy.
I DNF'd this for a few reasons: First, there was zero chemistry between the two before the dude started eating the taco on like page 30 (I may be off but they met like twice), and second... The number of female skaters who can land a quad lutz in the entire world at time of writing is single digits, and none of them are over 20. The fact that HG showed "Stassy" (why does this nickname make me recoil so much??) doing one well into her college years, at collegiate level skating, took me right out of the story.
Absolutely agree with the second one! Huge figure skating fan, love pairs but the amount of pairs in the current field struggling to even have consistent double-doubles and then you have a random female pair skater at collegiate level jumping a quad? Yeah I'm not buying it
the only ones with the quad lutzes right now are the russian girls and only TWO (2) are 20 or older, also one of them chooses to not land them in competitions and the other just got the lutz back which is trusova, but they can't even come back to isu competitions rn because of the war. i can only think of alysa liu when i think of non-russians who can do quads, and i'm pretty sure she can't even do them anymore. this book is ridiculous.
So true 😭 I wanted to show guardians of the galaxy 3 to my parents and suddenly realised that they would have to watch like 5 other movies to understand the characters and just had to give up
Oh absolutely! After the MCU gained such big acclaim with fans, I think a lot of studios and writers just abandoned the concept of fresh new ideas and thought that the MCU formula is what made MCU so successful and popular and now all we get is 50 movies in the same franchise that all get progressively lazier and worse (ironically just like the MCU itself)
when you said "brady, last name brady", for a second i thought he was called Brady Brady and i was suddenly on the book's side for its daring naming conventions
As a figure skater (and a pairs ice dancer), the trope of "hockey player has to partner a figure skater" trope is an automatic turn-off for me because it's just such a ridiculous premise. It's just not possible. Also just quitting pairs and going solo isn't really a THING either. Lutz is pronounced luke "Luh + tss." (like in the Ice Princess clip about cheese)
It's pretty funny picturing an overconfident hockey player who thought he could immediately master competitive figure skating struggling just to skate in figure skates
Right?? I think if you're writing a book and not fanfiction putting a random hockey player in a figure skate routine is a bit disrespectful, like figure skating isn't a difficult and dangerous sport???
@@ti9372 It’s literally such a slap in the face and I’m not even a figure skater! It’s like having a football player step in to do a gymnastics routine! The logic is genuinely nowhere to be found! They’re all different and difficult sports. Just because ice skating and ice hockey have ice in common doesn’t mean they’re easy to be swapped back and forth 😭
I just want to say, as a figure skating fan, I honestly felt offended. It was very obvious that the author didn't do anything beyond the most surface level research for the sport Some background info before I get into my rant: there are 6 types of jump take off in figure skating, the easiest being toe-loop and salchows, the hardest being lutz and axel. A quad is when the skater rotates 4 times in the air, a triple is when they do 3. all you need to know is that a quad is like 100x more difficult than a triple, I'm not even exaggerating. The quad lutz-the jump Anastasia was practicing at the beginning of the book- is like the second hardest jump in figure skating. Until late 2022, the quad lutz was the most difficult jump being landed. In international competitions, only three women/girls have landed the jump. Anastasia, a pairs skater, has no business practicing it. For reference, the pairs world champions last year, their most difficult jumps were triple salchows and triple toe-loops. If Anastasia was so technically proficient, given her disposition, she would be in single skating. and like there are ways to show her determination for the sport that is realistic. We could've seen her trying to gain difficulty in a lift by practicing more dangerous daring position or her trying to gain difficulty in the twists by trying to hit a split or something. it might sound confusing but a good author, one who knows about the sport, should be able to come up with realistic struggles. and by the way, just because hockey and figure skating are on the same surface doesn't mean the skills are transferable. It's like saying a footballer can become a rugby player in no time because their sports both happen on the grass. All figure skaters at the high competitive levels start skating before they turn 10 so I don't buy a hockey player could ever speedrun all the skills, post-puberty, in less than a year.
@@derangedmaniac3827 when i tell you i felt the exact same way about this book 😭i've been following the sport for 2 years and the lack of research irritated me
"You know what's not a perfect p****? THE CAT THAT JUST THREW UP ON MY BED. I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU DID THAT. WHILE I'M FILMING?! IN FRONT OF MY SALAD?!" I am HOWLING. Partly with laughing and partly in sympathy. My cat puked behind my door earlier, and I couldn't hear because I had my headphones on. So guess what happened when I opened my door? Yeeeeaah 😂
My dog has real bad diarrhea right now and has been good at trying to hold it until going outside(that and I’m trying to make sure he goes out every half hour just to make sure he doesn’t have to go) and I was doing so good, until I put my headphones in like you and was reading while listening to music. Then I got up to go to the kitchen and make breakfast as I stepped in dog shit. That was all on me and not the dogs fault so I cleaned up with no complaints. I learned my lesson
My family got a new couch and the literal day after we got it, our cat jumped onto it just to puke into the little space between cushions. That was fun to clean up…
I had a cat who had the bad habit of eating so fast she’d throw up. The amount of times I’d yell “nooo don’t throw up there!!” was unreal. And, yes, she did throw up in my bed 💀
@@ImaginaryAlchemistah, the scarf ‘n barf, a classic 😅 I distract my cat or take away her food bowl if she’s eating too much at once. It mostly works, but mostly bc she only goes nuts over wet food (her dry food is always available bc she just doesn’t gain weight, long by tiny at ~7lbs), and we use the sheba half-portions anyway. I’m also single, no kids, and love staying in my room so watching her while she eats once a day is very doable lol
🏒 random, but i love how u brought up the fact that an autistic child and an autistic adult are not gonna exact the same. it may seem small but as an autistic person people say stuff like "well you dont act like my 5 year old nephew whos autistic" its refreshing to see someone acknowledge that autism doesn't just disappear in early childhood ❤
@@aerialacrobat just came here to say my husband is autistic and the infantilizing some people project onto him is disturbing. Feels very weird especially as someone who is married to him.
@aerialacrobat Yeahhh, as an autist, I actually dread autistic side characters because they're always Like That. Always a sweet, wholesome bean that everyone wants to protect at all costs. Very alienating.
@@kitty-vicious it's expecially alienating to me as an autistic afab person because in my experience I've always been on the other end being the "parent friend", because I've been forced to "grow up" and "be mature" since I was very little.
Ngl if there’s one kind of person I’d expect to be able to run in heels it’d be a figure skater. Like I’d be shocked if someone who can spin and flip on ice while strapped to blades didn’t have the balance and posture required to run in heels
Imagine the track and field teams, the swim teams, the fucking baseball and football teams, they don’t step foot in the ice rink areas and are just stuck in a meeting about something like “We have an ice rink? We have two ice rinks? Why do we have two ice rinks….”
Theory: Aaron was a dick to Stasi because he was in love with Nate and his kiss with Stasi was driven by internalized homophobia and the need to prove to the world that he's straight
I'm aware that college is different but my hs public speaking and academic teams are considered student athletes. The thought of them in an all athletes meeting for tearing up an ice rink cracks me up 😂
The way a hockey player would never be able to step in for a figure skater is crazy. Also, she does pairs and not solo so idk how she managed to transition. They would have just paired her with someone else
Why do people always write about hockey? Why does it have to be hockey? Be brave. Be different. Make a book about Cockroach racing. Or unicycle hockey if it has to be hockey. If it’s not that I don’t want it.
i miiiight be wrong lmao but i think it became hockey when there was some backlash over people writing a lot of football romances with white male leads considering how football is a sport that predominately features black men (and i'm probably guessing said books usually had predominately white casts in general).
I saw a Sled hockey game when I was younger, which is just hockey but the players are disabled so they use sleds. It was such a fun game to watch, they were crazy talented. And more vicious than regular hockey. Don't know why they can't use that one AND have the bonus of having representation for wheelchair users.
So, I'm meant to believe that these athletes don't have guidelines on how to make an efficient meal plan? Does this college not have a nutritionist for their athletes? Anastasia not knowing that she can't eat just vegetables and fruits, is the most unrealistic thing I have heard this week (it's monday).
Yeah, just goes to show this is an author who knows little to nothing about the subject matter. Like they should have nutritionists or people whose job it is to make sure the players are getting this calorie intake right. What about physical therapists or fitness routines outside of the rink? I don't know enough about skating and hockey but if football players have peole for that, why don't they?
@Ashbrash1998 Yep! It's now sunday, and this is still the most unrealistic thing I have heard this week. I might feel different it it was presented as ED and as toxic culture around certain sports. Like if they knew what they should eat, but choose not to. If MC knowingly made the decision, because of pressure from their roommate, not because they are just "silly little girlie"
Something to be notice in this book - and many others romance books - is that the general public's opinion on what is acceptable or not on this types of stories have changed, and now authors have to create characters that are more self aware and have to talk about agency and consent - which is great, I'm not complaining about that! The problem is that many MANY romance tropes don't really work with that, and because of it you end up with a protagonist that keeps contradicting herself in order to fit a certain trope but at the same time be relatable to the audience I do think you can have both, you just have to put more work into developing these characters in a different way. Like, in this book I think we could just erase the jealous partner and find another way to create conflict or maybe make Anastasia start therapy during the events of the story and not before, but idk it's easier to make perfect character from the go than spend time actually developing them
I feel like the whole jealous partner bit could stay, but make it a toxic male-female friendship and skating partnership. Another comment mentioned how it sounds like Aaron has an ED himself and I think conflict around a toxic, co-dependent friendship is a lot more unique and compelling than basic, badly written romantic jealousy.
Honestly, besides Aaron being poorly written I think his character is currently a HUGE miss in a way that feels Bad if the author has even a single iota of a pulse on the scene. There have been several male figure skaters (including a well known pairs skater!!!!) who have been implicated in abuse (including SA) of other skaters. Aaron's character could have really easily touched on those discussion and on power, abuse, and star power but instead is just...Bad Guy Controlling and Eroding Boundaries Because...Bad!!! Like when this a conversation that's actually ongoing in FS spaces? Such a shame.
You mentioned not seeing the male character with migraines and wishing the migraine rep was a bit more prevalent so I had to mention the book Better Hate Than Never by Chloe Liese. The MMC has migraines and I loved the way it was represented. But, also, there is ace rep which was so great and made the spicy scenes SO much better as a reader on the ace spectrum who is picky about those.
Back when this was becoming popular, I was so excited thinking it was Icebreaker by AL Graziadei everyone was talking about and they I learned its a whole other book.
the college house parties i went to had the longest bathroom lines EVER, mostly because people would go in groups and be super drunk in there and forget that there’s a whole line outside. when my friends threw house parties i always loved sneaking off into the secret bathroom with no line
I have also read Icebreaker by A.L. Graziadei and gave it five stars! As a hockey fan (go Leafs go!), it was so enjoyable to read because it actually used real NHL teams, and it was obvious the author was also a fan and knew what they were talking about. The scenes on the ice were so awesome and the discussion around the pressure put on young hockey stars to be the best all the time to ensure a future in the NHL was thought-provoking. I tried to read Hannah Grace's Icebreaker and DNF'ed it because I was so disappointed about the lack of real hockey. If anyone else here is a hockey fan like me and wants to read a hockey romance that is actually good, I highly recommend A.L. Graziadei's Icebreaker!! I am so disappointed that books like Hannah Grace's Icebreaker are lazy and don't include anything real about hockey. She could have made so many people get into hockey and understand how great of a sport it is, but instead, she just used it as an excuse to sexualize hockey players since they tend to have larger frames and be pretty muscular. Thank you for mentioning Graziadei's book in this video!! ❤
Right! Kinda like how IRL Taylor has helped introduce lots of women to football. And as a side note, as a KC person, though I can’t speak for the whole city, I feel super protective of her for the mean tweets from a certain candidate for high office. Don’t mess with our girl asshole!
☃️ I saw this book being sold in the Teen section at Walmart. I hate it. Why can't the publishing industry have a maturity rating score like video games, movies, and music so bookseller understand what they're selling 😫
They kinda had one but recently YA (which originally was very kid oriented) to started to involve more adult books. And I don't mean like death or murder, it now has books full of hard-core smut. They get away with it by claiming to be under YA, but like 17-18 year old YA. Which is fine but they 100% need a system to break up the books in YA.
@@gggthsb to be fair this isn't the fault of the cover itself, I take it as an example of the publishing world avoiding thinking critically about what they sell like the plague. If you can't be bothered to research the littlest information about a book before deciding what to sell it as, that's kind of on you
Also I feel like this is a problem with a lot of stores not designation a new adult section so they are sticking it in the wrong places. Publishing contributes but I don't believe it's actually published as a YA book
As somebody who works for a doctors office and work for an insurance company. Have the neurologist do a peer to peer about the denial. And then have them work out a payment plan with you. Because if you have proof that they gave you a referral that's bullshit
7:30 Have either the neurology clinic or the pediatrician clinic (or both, from my experience as a person who grew up with a ton of specialized medical requirements, the general pediatrician was the first go to), have some clinic *file an appeal* for reconsideration of coverage. Resend the referral (because it has to exist you got the appointment you know) and physically drop it off at local insurance office for better odds they “discover” it.
@@ReadswithRachel yes it’s possible lol. It’s only funny because my mom had the same reaction upon discovering that she had been unaware of the “opt in” reimbursement for travel to speciality clinics including gas and lodging (just 10 years of cross state travel nbd). It’s difficult because they don’t tell you what options exist until you approach them. But yes, and you can approach both clinics about appealing and insurance- just appeal it and my mom broke down and cried many times from the stress so it’s understandable.
@@ReadswithRachel I had to appeal TWICE with my insurance when I had major abdominal surgery because "it should have been outpatient" and they "had asked their internal medicine doctors who review these". I was like, I am about to send you pictures of the giant mass that was removed and the long ass slice down my abdomen that was stapled shut, and then you can talk to my surgeon about whether or not I should have been going the fuck home afterwards, thanks. They ended up paying it. And it was PRE APPROVED. So infuriating the hoops patients and even doctors have to jump through; our health care system kills.
Probably a hot take, even though it shouldn't be, romance books shouldn't be longer than 300pages. Also, I really need authors to stop fetishizing shortness. As a short adult, I have never viewed myself as a toddler. A better Hockey romance that I read a few years ago is The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen. (I hope it's as good as my memory thinks it is)
Yes! I was looking for The Year We Fell Down in the comments. (And yes, it still holds up, although the series is a little unhinged, but in a fun way 😂)
I enjoyed The Year We Fell Down! One that I'm really surprised I've never even seen mentioned is Gravity by Tal Bauer, an MM tender hockey romance. I'm kind of stanning it in these comments but I think it's massively underrated.
I just want everyone to understand and appreciate the sheer amount of effort and dedication it takes to maintain a 'greek god' type of physiche. It takes hours each day or nearly double every other day. Most athletes won't look 'defined', but will have healthy layers of fat over their muscles (which the notable exceptions being biceps and chest). This constant emphasis on men being chiseled sculptures is the same men emphasizing women being skinny.
You don't understand how grateful I am for you posting this video at this moment, I'm sitting in my bedroom and a few hours ago I began decluttering multiple boxes of art supplies mixed with random junk I hoarded to find necessary paints for an art project I need to finish by tomorrow morning and all my motivation now is gone and I had no hope and now I can just focus back on it listening about bad romance books 😭😭😭
One thing i hate about things like this is that it downplays the fact that skating for hockey vs figure skating is different (the skates and the ice) and how hard it is to do the stuff pairs skaters do. The focus on weight sucks, but even singles skaters still have to carefully watch weight gain because it can throw things off in ways that have the potential to cause serious injury. The meal plans should just be designed by actual professionals and should include protein to build muscle for both parties. Because muscle is important to figure skating.
It’s the way I physically cannot tell the difference between the love interest and the villain. Like I zone out for a second and I can’t tell who the scene is about I love a good story where it turns out the protagonist isn’t as different from the villain as they want to believe, but this absolutely isn’t that
Note from a writer who has a BA in history: always Google names, places, etc. You never know what real world parallel they might have. I say this because I am currently reading a book about intelligence during the Cold War, and the Stasi was the intelligence agency for East Germany. I realise that "Stasi" is meant to be an infantilisation/cute variant of "Anastasia", but I can't get around that parallel.
I have read one romance series that does a good job introducing characters who will be the protagonists of future books-the Bright Falls trilogy by Ashley Herring Blake. In the first book, Delilah and Claire are the main couple, and Astrid and Iris-who will be the leads in the second and third books, respectively-are Claire’s best friends and Astrid is Delilah’s stepsister. Neither of them ever feel like they’re there to set up a sequel, and in fact, one could argue that Delilah’s sisterly relationship with Astrid is just as relevant to the plot as her romance with Claire.
Oh yes, that series is great, and the fact that all the main and side characters actually feel relevant to each other in some way was a nice touch overall, plus all the couple's actually had chemistry.
Wait wait, I understand your confusion but let me explain: Nate being controlling is good while Aaron's controlling nature is a bad thing because Nate good, Aaron bad. Why Nate good? Because Aaron bad. Hope this helps! ☺️
The main character of a romance novel's nickname is _Stazi?!!_ Like, the secret police that tortured, imprisoned, abducted, and murdered people in East Germany for fifty years, the fucking _Stazi?_
Hannah Grace's website doesn't have TWs for Nate's jealousy and possessiveness and it should. I'm older, and I read a lot of bodice rippers in the late 90s and early 2000s, and the behaviour of some of these MMCs who are *not* in dark romance would actually fit in kinda nicely with those bodice ripper MMCs and, honestly, I find that kind of alarming and upsetting? In the days of yore, bodice rippers were very much a subgenre of romance on their own--and, yes, they fulfilled the RWA's romance definition of a) a central love story, wherein the main plot is about the characters falling in love and struggling to make their relationship(s) work and 2) having their happy ever after, or happy for now. But you knew what you were almost certainly going to be getting into when you picked up a Bertice Small. Dark romance is kinda in many ways bodice rippers dialled up to 11. And all disk horse aside about the subgenre, but if I want to go dip my toes into dark romance at least I'm going to know precisely what I'm getting into with those MMCs. They're gonna be mean, and petty, and jealous, and possessive, and violent, and rough, and do probably bad dirty talk (fanfic writers can be so much better at that), and et cetera et cetera et cetera. I'm just really tired, actually, of these dudes who are *not* in dark romance (or bodice rippers) displaying jealous, territorial, possessive, emotionally stunted, awful behaviour. I object to picking up a book that's not labelled dark romance and finding Nates Hawkins and Christians Grey. I shouldn't be blindsided by it and I feel unsafe in the genre without finding specific recs for "MMC is actually always nice to the FMC and doesn't act jealous and territorial".
@@DarwinRoger893 Yeah. If and when I'm up to reading that sort of behaviour from MMCs, I'll go looking for it. Dark romance is right there, or, if I'm feeling really spicy, there's stuff on AO3 I can find. I don't expect my escapist fiction to teach life lessons, but I do expect it to be careful about adhering not just to overarching genre expectations, but *subgenre* expectations. If I'm picking up a rom-com about collegiate athletes with a cutesy, brightly-coloured cover, I honestly don't think it's okay to be blindsided by toxic and abusive behaviour from said protags until and unless there's a big subplot about going to therapy and learning not to be like that. Even then: warn.
@@yarnpenguinyes yes yes! It's a big issue that the subgenres have all started to merge together. If i pick up a lighthearted romance, I want the love interest to be respectful, caring and loving. I want them to portray healthy behaviors because that's what I signed up for. Dark romances are a huge mess because the authors think making the love interest an asshole and borderline rapist makes the romance dark.
I feel like in a book like this it’s even more of a problem, since it’s interspersed with so much like, healthy romance stuff. Having jealous controlling behaviours alongside proper healthy consent talk, without properly acknowledging that it’s unhealthy behaviour, it normalises the possessive stuff.
Why does he keep speaking like that? I’m at 37:59 at the time I’m writing this and he literally says shit like “Example text here, Anastasia.” No one says another person’s name that much It’s so weird like imagine speaking to someone and almost every time they say your name to end the sentence(examples using my online name): “Let’s get lunch, Vixen.” “You can’t hide from me, Vixen.” “You’re so bad, Vixen.” It’s so annoying to hear like please stop writing/speaking like that I beg of you😭
It's a sales technique that supposedly builds rapport; it reminds me of used-car salesmen. Incidentally, it's also what a friend of mine's church taught them to do when they were trying to convert people. She did it to me and I told her it was weird and off-putting and to please stop.
It’s something I’ve been very aware of in my own writing lately. I probably only call my friends by name when I’m trying to get their attention. If I’m teasing them with a goofy nickname I might use it more often, but that’s really it. It’s one of those little things that make dialogue less believable
@@shinyumbreon696I work as a cashier and the sales thing is 100% it. Upper management want us to use the customer’s name a couple times (we make phone number accounts so we see their names lol) and my district manager even confirmed it’s exactly what car dealerships do!
okay! i do not wanna be annoying and “um actually” 🤓….but the ice in figure skating and the ice in hockey is at different temps so they realistically wouldn’t be sharing a rink 😭 they would injure themselves on the wrong ice.
As a massive fan of skating I was so excited about this book and so incredibly let down. There were so many issues it's hard to even know where to start. The representation of skating is so wild lol. We kept being told that Anastasia had this regimented schedule with zero proof of that being the case. Skating at that level requires so much. There's no way that she could be going to college and doing well in her classes, partying with that much regularity, hanging out with love interests, while also training at an elite level for skating. Both of the main characters were incredibly annoying and unlikeable. I also felt that this level of explicit scenes was over the top for a story about college students. Yes, I know they're adults but it just gave me an icky feeling to the point where I was skipping over all the scenes.
One thing I found hysterical about the sequel is that Ryan pops up again-having relations with the fmc of THAT book. I’m tempted to check out the third book just to see if he appears to have more relations with *that* fmc.
I DNF'd this in the AMAZON SAMPLE, which is the first 10%. All I remember thinking is that Stassy's character shot right past assertive and into straight-up mean for no reason. I didn't want her to get a romance and a happy ending. In general, it doesn't surprise me that hockey took over the sports romance genre: it's an excuse to feature unrealistically tall buff MMCs who also speak French.
@@hanakesseibi.5b.273 my reasons are a little complicated, but it boils down to an underlying issue with the concept: instead of using historical events, figures, and wars to inspire an original plot, Kuang directly copied real historical events and people into her novel, sometimes barely changing the names at all if she thought her Western audience wouldn’t pick up on it. This was the reason I stopped reading, because I had a horrible feeling her lack of originality in the early chapters would result in a poorly executed mess during the later sections of the book. Some examples of the early “copy-paste” history she writes in the beginning include Sun Tzu being called Sun Zi (literally just his Chinese name 孫子, with no tones), the Century of Humiliation is called the Age of Humiliation, the Warring States Period is called the Era of Warring States, et cetera. The early chapters cover a vast amount of exposition for this “fictional” country’s history, but it’s clear the author had a poor grasp of the context and importance of these events and time periods when she wrote the book. This is forgivable in a teenage YA author, but it becomes a huge problem for the later sections which I’ve heard attempt to take a “darker” tone. The first half of the book is a standard YA magic school plot, with all of the overdone tropes. The second half apparently takes a sharp left turn, and the main character ends up committing genocide at the end of the book. The reason I am calling Kuang a clown is because she dedicated her book to Iris Chang, the author of the Rape of Nanking. Chang was one of the most influential journalists and activists for Chinese history in the last three decades, and rose to incredible fame for her powerful English-language compilation of the horrors of the Nanking massacre committed by the invading Japanese troops in 1937-1938. It is the opinion of many readers that Kuang appropriated Chang’s work by inserting scenes directly “inspired” by her book into the later parts of The Poppy War, purely for shock value, allowing her surface-level YA novel to be marketed as darker or edgier. It’s also some people’s opinion that Kuang does not have the authority to claim the horrors of Nanking for her own, given that she is of the Chinese-American diaspora. The Poppy War opened up discourses on the diversity of experiences within the Chinese diaspora and the way Americans (often) tend to market BIPOC authors as being able to speak to the unifying experiences of their ethnicities. I don’t have an opinion on that specifically as I am not of the diaspora, but it’s a conversation that’s being had. Also (sorry this is so long!) the main character commits the equivalence of the USA dropping the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the book, except it’s worse because she massacres the entire island of Japan with magic, or something. I’ll probably finish the book just because I think it’s so fascinating that a novel with this level of cultural insensitivity can be published without being checked.
but anyways, Poppy War was her debut 😭 I want to read Babel anyways because my friends keep recommending it, so I expect she learned a lot of lessons from her first three books!
On wash days, I sleep with a silk wrap around my head for my curly hair. The silk wrap lives on my nightstand. One time I put it on and I'm smoothing down the edges and there's a strange lump in it. My sweet, precious, perfect elderly cat had thrown up in it and then scrunched it up so I wouldn't find it. 😮💨 There was so much puke crumb in my hair, dude
**Rhysand vs Tamlin: Jealousy (**32:33**)** This is what ticks me off in a lot of romance books, and what I wish the "besties" in romance books called out. IRL, I've called out friends who let their significant others be toxic to them, yet they get upset about toxicity from other people displaying those SAME behaviors. This can be ex-partners or the partners of others. I wish romance MCs were actually spoken to by their friends. I would love to see book besties go "Hey, this is some hypocrisy that it's fine for your new partner to pull the same conniving, jealous bull that that other guy did. What's that about?" Like, iunno, it rubs me the wrong way how romance books paint this as "it's completely fine to repeatedly fall in love with people who do you wrong because, at the time, it's love!" It's so refreshing when love interests break the cycle instead of fit into it but alas 🤧
im 30 seconds in and im assuming rachel will get into this but it’s insane that the author wanted to include a muslim best friend character, didn’t do any research to make her an accurate and well-written muslim character, and then when she faced backlash, just made the character white rather and called it a day 💀
@@Kam_i_ so i never finished it and it’s been a hot minute since i tried starting it, but when i originally read it (self/online published at the time), anastasia’s best friend (the one who dated robby iirc) was a hijabi muslim girl. BUT since she was written as doing a bunch of haram things such as premarital sex, with no explanation in the text for why she was acting out of the bounds of her religion, there was a bunch of backlash against the author hannah grace. then, rather than taking down her book to rework this character to be more respectfully written, she quickly just changed her name and appearance to make her a white girl or at least no longer muslim.
It is amazing how little ice time is in this book as you describe it. I learned to skate as an adult and it seems like it would be easy to show a little understanding of what a shared rink would entail. Figure skaters leave patches of little divots from working on their spins. Hockey players leave ruts when they dig in their heels for fast turns and stops. Each can feel weird under your runners when you don’t expect them. Now I want a F/F hockey book (after I check out the Good Icebreaker™️).
I don't understand the idea of having a hockey player sub for your figure skating partner at all, they're such different disciplines even if they overlap- hey, I have 6months to make this quarterback my competition level partner for salsa/ballet/tap dancing, I mean, he's in good shape both require you to use your feet! She doesn't know a singles figure skater or someone in another level who would be a better fit to sub in??? Also appreciate your suggestions for fixes, the fact that his dad is a serial cheater would have even given an easy pro-therapy avenue to discuss why he is being toxic about her relaunching with others so he could GET OVER IT, it was right there!
I was actually kind of shocked at the amount of smut. the way people talked about it (I don't use TikTok but I saw some yt shorts and a couple spoiler-free reviews) made it seem like a pretty cool, cute-funny romance or something. instead it's literally just a lot of bad college porn. should've been a movie or miniseries on Netflix instead, maybe it would've worked better as a comedy screenplay?
I do find it strange that Nate managed to get off of breaking Aaron's arm, but not for going up and punching him at the competition. Which sure it was because he kissed Stasia, but all the school is gonna see is that Nate has been accused of assaulting the same student twice and the second time is confirmed to have happend. As well that Stasia isn't really a non biased witness because she's his girlfriend so of course she's gonna try and protect him. I could almost expect that Aaron with all his money and pettiness would have filed a police report for what happened as a final way to screw both of them. Then think about the video being used against him as a sign that Nate has a pattern of bad behavior that even his friends joke about it. Could have started a conversation to fix Nate's behavior whether he gets punished or not for what happened and he might actually have to find another school or profession. I also think Aaron could have been a better antagonist by having him be like a toxic perfectionist that is a result of his parents, it bleeds into his relationship with Stasia as well as comes from their coach. The reason Stasia deals with him at all is that she also is a perfectionist, Aaron has more skill/success than she does and that he does occasionally support and help her personally and as a skater. So his beef with Nate and not any other guy is because the other guys were on her schedule, Nate is messing up her schedule and changing their usual dynamic. So Aaron is upset that this random guy has come in and is jeopardizing all the work and sacrifices they both have done as partners for their sport to be for nothing.
I find it funny that as a life long hockey fan, (whos first crush was a hockey player) you would think hockey romance would be my thing but the behavior of hockey romance readers has completely turned me off from ever reading them.
I had a friend almost exactly like Aaron. The emotional abuse he leveled against me and another friend went on for over 10 years because he always had a way of explaining it, gaslighting us, or manipulating us into turning our focus on each other instead of him. And while he'd never admit it, it's because he enjoyed hurting other people because he's miserable in himself.
i'm so glad you mentioned the other icebreaker because i felt like i was taking crazy pills. whenever i'd hear this book referenced, i'd think like "oh i read and like that one" and then i'd see the cover and be like "that... is not the book i read... wtf did i read??" 😆
OMG, Check Please! by Ngozi Ukazu will always be THE hockey romance story to me, as a comics reader. Its a little funny watching the Hets try and recreate the magic of that comic but you CANT
I couldn’t take this book seriously from the beginning because this is just such a fanfic premise. They pop up every four years during the winter olympics, like clockwork, across most fandoms. I’ve read a couple and some of them are good, but there’s a lot more I’m willing to let slide in fanfic than I am in a published novel. I’ll turn my brain off and suspend my disbelief when I’m scrolling ao3 in the dark at 3am, but when I spend real human money on a book (or take time out of my day to get it from the library), I expect at least a modicum of research (and also more believable characters…)
Is it just me or do romance stories now want to replicate the: Bad reletionship until the male character points it out from ACOTAR? because I feel that many are doing the exact same thing
most unrealistic part is university of california making a new campus instead of trying to cram more students into the existing campuses despite not having enough space (esp for housing). lowkey i wonder if she got permission to use the UC trademark for this, they are infamously and annoyingly litigious
IT IS SO GOOD. It has such good and healthy rep! It discusses mental health issues, internalized homophobia, the gays winning in the end, and is just so amazing. I was a fan back when it was a tumblr blog. I'm so happy to see Ngozi Ukazu talked about and the series getting to be experienced all over again
it baffles me that anastasia is a) doing quads as a pair skater (which is incredibly unusual); b) doing quads without being an incredibly high-level athlete??? struggling with a quad LUTZ nonetheless (that's like the second hardest jump before the axel)??? the only couple i've seen doing quads are the literal reigning olympic champions and granted i'm pretty sure they were the first ones to win the olympics with quads because the previous champions didn't even do them.
I have not read this book, but after hearing this in depth review, I already came up some changes. A) make a dramedy or a romantic psychological thriller. B) have this be 200-300 pages less. C) take Nate out and stick with Aaron and Ryan. D) have aaron still be arron and every time he controls her diet, she uses her schedule as the ultimate form of control. E) have ryan be a main character and the main love interest. They start with the friends with benefits and be a safe haven for Anastasia. As Ryan observes Aaron’s manipulation and how he treats her, he suggests being her skating partner. Don’t know if I make him a newbie or have him being an experienced ice skater. F) Aaron keeps jeopardizing their practices and at one point “seduces” Anastasia before she decides to have a committed relationship with Ryan. G) to make sure this is not depressing from beginning to end, I would have it end happily with a somewhat unrealistic ending: aaron getting arrested or him moving away.
You can file a compliant to the insurance that referred you and to the doctors office that didn't check your coverage. Then you can get all of the paperwork together and file an appeal against the health insurance company. They will try to get away with not paying but since they sent you to a specialist then they cannot deny your coverage. Hope that helps, all the best.
Idk if this is a hot take or not, but I've read both MF and MM sports romances and the MM ones are almost always better. They're just more interesting to me because there are so many more angles on team dynamics, the pressure on players to fit into heteronormative stereotypes, and how we view professional athletes to talk about.
I was genuinely so excited to read this book. The cover made it look like it was going to be a cute romance and when I heard there's was smut I figured I could just skim past it for the plot. I barely got halfway through it before I gave up 😭
This reminds me of a RUclips video where a hockey player actually swapped places with a figure skater and it was the most interesting thing ever. And surprisingly they had way more on screen chemistry than these two characters.
The clip of Thing from Addams family had me laugh so bad. Also, thank you for this - I saw so many people recommend this thing I was thinking of maybe trying it, but by the time you got to chapter 2 I decided I have zero desire to read this.
There are so many things wrong with this book but the thing that EXTREMELY bugs me as a Colorado native and survivor of the seasonal ski industry is that there are almost no independently owned ski resorts left in Colorado, let alone in Eagle County LMAO !!! Like what, does this man own Ski Cooper ???? Sunlight Mountain ??? Otherwise, Nathan's dad would have to somehow own one of the huge ski industry megacorporations (namely, Vail Resorts), and therefore would probably be a billionaire. Also Maple Hill is the least Californian name town name on the planet (is also a veteran of the UC system). I literally just cannot suspend my disbelief for anything in this book, from the setting, to the plot, to the character motivations, to little nitpicky details like the ski thing. It just smacks of a refusal to research anything or even really think things through. Ugh. Anyway !! Thanks for this great review, as always.
1:11:37 Nathan already was a very iffy protagonist for me (for both having the depth of a cardboard cutout and being super jealous of any guy who breathes around Anastasia including his own FRIENDS) but this line is where he lost me (second place goes to the "i'll put a baby in you" thing) Was he trying to allege that the therapist was in cahoots with Aaron and helping him break Anastasia and him (Nathan) apart??? That's just a woman doing her job! You don't know that, dickhead! Screw this character, honestly. We're supposed to laud him because he's not Aaron but there's so many red flags in the way he treats Anastasia (and women in general) that are treated like cute character quirks. Also here's a hockey emoji for Rachel because her videos are great 🏒
to the ‘friend’ that recommended me this book, i read it and then i blanked out a bit before proceeding to slam the book and threw it away at a thrift store. first of all, out of all the nicknames anastasia couldve had, stassy (sounds like a staph infection) was the best to come up with? what happened to anya? what happened stacia, stacy, ana?? anything really 💀⁉️ also, the ‘friend’ told me that it was a cute romance book? i was so dumb and naive, nothing about it was cute or romantic to me 🧍🏻♀️ i felt like i was reading a sitcom and then the smut scenes… yknow, maybe its bcs im aroace but what in the world were those smut scenes? what is going on exactly? god forbid i would know. also, absolutely love your takes rachel 🤩 i always watch them when im doing my assignments, keeps me entertained and motivated ❤
it's the side by side quads that threw me - and you're telling me you're NOT part of the national team ???? couldn't deal with it as someone who knows anything about figure skating
I know nothing about either of these books both Hockey romances named 'Icebreaker' but that second one won as far as covers go. I mean, it looks warm, cozy, and dynamic. There's intimacy being displayed by the protagonists, perhaps a hint at the chemistry they have within the story. There's a lot more detail too, like with the bandages on the red-head's hands. Then you look at the first one and the two "love interests" are just standing there....looking at each other...in what is essentially a white void...I guess I can guess from the cover that they're start off with a kind of snarky odd-couple relationship at first but that's really all I'm getting. Honestly, the only negative I'll give the second cover is just the fact that they both have the same hair cut. Anyway, I now have a library hold for that other icebreaker book, I guess. Very regretful that when I searched for it, _this_ book was the only one that came up until I did a "deep" search.
Thank you for what you said abt Henry. As an autistic adult 🙏 i hate getting talked down to. Also, like others said, this comes off as a Cutting Edge (and maybe Ice Princess crossover) fanfiction 😂😂😂 and the chemistry of the lead actors in Cutting Edge would blow these leads out of the water... oh, and lines at the bathroom were a college party thing for sure. 🏒
My God, I forgot how annoying this book was. I gave it a 2 because I thought it had some promise and I didn't completely hate it in the beginning. Everything with Aaron just made the book unbearable and the epilogue irritated the crap out of me. As someone who is a hockey fan, you don't finish college and win the Stanley cup the next year. If he was actually on the top line of an NHL team, he maybe would have played maybe a year in college before getting called up to the NHL. Also the getting pregnant in the epilogue pissed me off because I remember Anastasia saying earlier that she wanted to adopt. I'm a romance reader but I can only tolerate so much stupidity.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
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The first 500 people to use my link will get a 1-month free trial of Skillshare!: skl.sh/readswithrachel09241
Imagine being in like the fencing team or something who doesn’t even know where the ice rinks are, and you get forced into a meeting because someone damaged the ice. I would be so annoyed I’d support the vandal out of spite
EXACTLY
Can confirm I'm a collegiate fencer and I've never seen seen a hockey player why would I care about their rink when our own facility is shit
Right?! Like the swimmers are over here with their 25 meter pool they don’t need anything else. You think they WANT to take a giant ice bath? Nah. On behalf of swimmers, we also support the vandal out of spite.
@@Artbyhurricanyounot I confirm the swimmers' opinion
when will we get a female hockey player/male figure skater romance? *sigh*
also now I miss yuri on ice
This is a great question!!!
I MISS YOI TOO!! 😭❤️🩹
Hockey girl loves drama boy is cute
Or better: female hockey player/female figure skater: unofficial yuri on ice sequel
You're a visionary. They're both bisexual, right? 😂
Thinking about how Aaron had trouble lifting her and the meal plan with not enough protein to build muscle and thinking about how Aaron would have been a much more interesting character if instead of making him a "just because he is" villain with no real depth or motivation his arch had been about HIM being the one with an eating disorder and his and Anastasia's control issues being sort of co-dependent (like with like their JOINT meal plan) and stuff instead of just being...evil with randomly shifting motivations.
Oh that’s so interesting! The rareness of seeing eat disorders in men being discussed too, like the headaches
This sounds awesome and just makes a lot of sense
That's actually very intriguing and makes Aaron WAY more complex. It also ties into them being friends for so long, the whole co-dependent aspect of it, along with being skating partners. Honestly, a toxic male-female friendship would be a lot more compelling than romantic jealousy.
Damn they met with EVERY student athlete? What did the swimmers do to deserve this? 🤣
Melting the rink for an extra pool 😂
Wrestlers walking in like that gif of John Travolta in _Pulp Fiction_ like... ???
The golf team just like 👀
The archery team be like: “I didn’t been know we had a skating rink?”
@@BelleChanson0717 as if the swimmers would want to take an extra ice bath or want to swim farther than 25 yards 🤣
"A subspecies of women." He never even stops thinking this way, Anastasia just becomes one of the 'good ones' in his book. Zero character development.
I DNF'd this for a few reasons: First, there was zero chemistry between the two before the dude started eating the taco on like page 30 (I may be off but they met like twice), and second...
The number of female skaters who can land a quad lutz in the entire world at time of writing is single digits, and none of them are over 20. The fact that HG showed "Stassy" (why does this nickname make me recoil so much??) doing one well into her college years, at collegiate level skating, took me right out of the story.
Maybe because it sounds like Stasi which would be a good nickname for someone you absolutely despise
Stas is an abbreviation used for the male version Anastas, the female one should be Nastya
@@teslasharkHonestly, "Nasty-a" sounds like the type of insult I thought they were going for
Absolutely agree with the second one! Huge figure skating fan, love pairs but the amount of pairs in the current field struggling to even have consistent double-doubles and then you have a random female pair skater at collegiate level jumping a quad? Yeah I'm not buying it
the only ones with the quad lutzes right now are the russian girls and only TWO (2) are 20 or older, also one of them chooses to not land them in competitions and the other just got the lutz back which is trusova, but they can't even come back to isu competitions rn because of the war. i can only think of alysa liu when i think of non-russians who can do quads, and i'm pretty sure she can't even do them anymore. this book is ridiculous.
Also, I'll say it. The idea of a cinematic universe was the death of all of our media.
So true 😭 I wanted to show guardians of the galaxy 3 to my parents and suddenly realised that they would have to watch like 5 other movies to understand the characters and just had to give up
Oh absolutely! After the MCU gained such big acclaim with fans, I think a lot of studios and writers just abandoned the concept of fresh new ideas and thought that the MCU formula is what made MCU so successful and popular and now all we get is 50 movies in the same franchise that all get progressively lazier and worse (ironically just like the MCU itself)
!
when you said "brady, last name brady", for a second i thought he was called Brady Brady and i was suddenly on the book's side for its daring naming conventions
As a figure skater (and a pairs ice dancer), the trope of "hockey player has to partner a figure skater" trope is an automatic turn-off for me because it's just such a ridiculous premise. It's just not possible. Also just quitting pairs and going solo isn't really a THING either.
Lutz is pronounced luke "Luh + tss." (like in the Ice Princess clip about cheese)
It's pretty funny picturing an overconfident hockey player who thought he could immediately master competitive figure skating struggling just to skate in figure skates
@@Jess_talks_book Especially PAIRS XD.
This!! Picturing some burly hockey player adjusting to the different skates, different moves, the grace! I’m fucking cackling just thinking of it
Right?? I think if you're writing a book and not fanfiction putting a random hockey player in a figure skate routine is a bit disrespectful, like figure skating isn't a difficult and dangerous sport???
@@ti9372 It’s literally such a slap in the face and I’m not even a figure skater! It’s like having a football player step in to do a gymnastics routine! The logic is genuinely nowhere to be found! They’re all different and difficult sports. Just because ice skating and ice hockey have ice in common doesn’t mean they’re easy to be swapped back and forth 😭
I just want to say, as a figure skating fan, I honestly felt offended. It was very obvious that the author didn't do anything beyond the most surface level research for the sport
Some background info before I get into my rant: there are 6 types of jump take off in figure skating, the easiest being toe-loop and salchows, the hardest being lutz and axel. A quad is when the skater rotates 4 times in the air, a triple is when they do 3. all you need to know is that a quad is like 100x more difficult than a triple, I'm not even exaggerating.
The quad lutz-the jump Anastasia was practicing at the beginning of the book- is like the second hardest jump in figure skating. Until late 2022, the quad lutz was the most difficult jump being landed. In international competitions, only three women/girls have landed the jump. Anastasia, a pairs skater, has no business practicing it. For reference, the pairs world champions last year, their most difficult jumps were triple salchows and triple toe-loops. If Anastasia was so technically proficient, given her disposition, she would be in single skating.
and like there are ways to show her determination for the sport that is realistic. We could've seen her trying to gain difficulty in a lift by practicing more dangerous daring position or her trying to gain difficulty in the twists by trying to hit a split or something. it might sound confusing but a good author, one who knows about the sport, should be able to come up with realistic struggles.
and by the way, just because hockey and figure skating are on the same surface doesn't mean the skills are transferable. It's like saying a footballer can become a rugby player in no time because their sports both happen on the grass. All figure skaters at the high competitive levels start skating before they turn 10 so I don't buy a hockey player could ever speedrun all the skills, post-puberty, in less than a year.
this breakdown is fascinating! thank you for posting it, i had such fun reading it!
@@witchecheveria9417 im so glad my one-year-old rage fueled thoughts could bring you joy, it was great fun for me to write this as well.
@@derangedmaniac3827 when i tell you i felt the exact same way about this book 😭i've been following the sport for 2 years and the lack of research irritated me
"You know what's not a perfect p****? THE CAT THAT JUST THREW UP ON MY BED. I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU DID THAT. WHILE I'M FILMING?! IN FRONT OF MY SALAD?!"
I am HOWLING. Partly with laughing and partly in sympathy. My cat puked behind my door earlier, and I couldn't hear because I had my headphones on. So guess what happened when I opened my door? Yeeeeaah 😂
My dog has real bad diarrhea right now and has been good at trying to hold it until going outside(that and I’m trying to make sure he goes out every half hour just to make sure he doesn’t have to go) and I was doing so good, until I put my headphones in like you and was reading while listening to music. Then I got up to go to the kitchen and make breakfast as I stepped in dog shit. That was all on me and not the dogs fault so I cleaned up with no complaints. I learned my lesson
My family got a new couch and the literal day after we got it, our cat jumped onto it just to puke into the little space between cushions. That was fun to clean up…
I had a cat who had the bad habit of eating so fast she’d throw up. The amount of times I’d yell “nooo don’t throw up there!!” was unreal. And, yes, she did throw up in my bed 💀
@@ImaginaryAlchemistah, the scarf ‘n barf, a classic 😅 I distract my cat or take away her food bowl if she’s eating too much at once. It mostly works, but mostly bc she only goes nuts over wet food (her dry food is always available bc she just doesn’t gain weight, long by tiny at ~7lbs), and we use the sheba half-portions anyway. I’m also single, no kids, and love staying in my room so watching her while she eats once a day is very doable lol
@ImaginaryAlchemist All I can hear now, in a deeply bass masculine voice like on a murder doc, is "And she did, in fact, throw up there."
🏒 random, but i love how u brought up the fact that an autistic child and an autistic adult are not gonna exact the same. it may seem small but as an autistic person people say stuff like "well you dont act like my 5 year old nephew whos autistic" its refreshing to see someone acknowledge that autism doesn't just disappear in early childhood ❤
as a fellow autistic scrolling the comments, im glad im prepared for that! ❤
@@aerialacrobat just came here to say my husband is autistic and the infantilizing some people project onto him is disturbing. Feels very weird especially as someone who is married to him.
@aerialacrobat Yeahhh, as an autist, I actually dread autistic side characters because they're always Like That. Always a sweet, wholesome bean that everyone wants to protect at all costs. Very alienating.
@@kitty-vicious it's expecially alienating to me as an autistic afab person because in my experience I've always been on the other end being the "parent friend", because I've been forced to "grow up" and "be mature" since I was very little.
Ngl if there’s one kind of person I’d expect to be able to run in heels it’d be a figure skater. Like I’d be shocked if someone who can spin and flip on ice while strapped to blades didn’t have the balance and posture required to run in heels
Imagine the track and field teams, the swim teams, the fucking baseball and football teams, they don’t step foot in the ice rink areas and are just stuck in a meeting about something like
“We have an ice rink? We have two ice rinks? Why do we have two ice rinks….”
Theory: Aaron was a dick to Stasi because he was in love with Nate and his kiss with Stasi was driven by internalized homophobia and the need to prove to the world that he's straight
Pls someone write this fic !
I’d kill for this
Edit : I’m actually going to write this
Beautiful, fanfic idea
Aaron did give me gay vibes and I love this Theory.
@MillieRolph PLEASE TELL ME HOW ITS GOING!!
I'm aware that college is different but my hs public speaking and academic teams are considered student athletes. The thought of them in an all athletes meeting for tearing up an ice rink cracks me up 😂
Actually speaking of public speaking, one of my kids did a selection of this book for competition last spring. They..... didn't place.
_Chess players sigh and mutter in the background with the acadeca kids_
The way a hockey player would never be able to step in for a figure skater is crazy. Also, she does pairs and not solo so idk how she managed to transition. They would have just paired her with someone else
Why do people always write about hockey? Why does it have to be hockey?
Be brave. Be different. Make a book about Cockroach racing. Or unicycle hockey if it has to be hockey.
If it’s not that I don’t want it.
BRB writing my Murderball romance novel.
i miiiight be wrong lmao but i think it became hockey when there was some backlash over people writing a lot of football romances with white male leads considering how football is a sport that predominately features black men (and i'm probably guessing said books usually had predominately white casts in general).
i think,, curling × hurley would be so funny
I saw a Sled hockey game when I was younger, which is just hockey but the players are disabled so they use sleds. It was such a fun game to watch, they were crazy talented. And more vicious than regular hockey. Don't know why they can't use that one AND have the bonus of having representation for wheelchair users.
This is why I want to write a figure skating story that doesn't do the sport hella dirty
So, I'm meant to believe that these athletes don't have guidelines on how to make an efficient meal plan? Does this college not have a nutritionist for their athletes? Anastasia not knowing that she can't eat just vegetables and fruits, is the most unrealistic thing I have heard this week (it's monday).
Yeah, just goes to show this is an author who knows little to nothing about the subject matter. Like they should have nutritionists or people whose job it is to make sure the players are getting this calorie intake right. What about physical therapists or fitness routines outside of the rink? I don't know enough about skating and hockey but if football players have peole for that, why don't they?
@Ashbrash1998 Yep! It's now sunday, and this is still the most unrealistic thing I have heard this week.
I might feel different it it was presented as ED and as toxic culture around certain sports. Like if they knew what they should eat, but choose not to. If MC knowingly made the decision, because of pressure from their roommate, not because they are just "silly little girlie"
The clips of Ice Princess in between have been perfect
I’m so happy to hear they worked!
Something to be notice in this book - and many others romance books - is that the general public's opinion on what is acceptable or not on this types of stories have changed, and now authors have to create characters that are more self aware and have to talk about agency and consent - which is great, I'm not complaining about that!
The problem is that many MANY romance tropes don't really work with that, and because of it you end up with a protagonist that keeps contradicting herself in order to fit a certain trope but at the same time be relatable to the audience
I do think you can have both, you just have to put more work into developing these characters in a different way. Like, in this book I think we could just erase the jealous partner and find another way to create conflict or maybe make Anastasia start therapy during the events of the story and not before, but idk it's easier to make perfect character from the go than spend time actually developing them
I feel like the whole jealous partner bit could stay, but make it a toxic male-female friendship and skating partnership. Another comment mentioned how it sounds like Aaron has an ED himself and I think conflict around a toxic, co-dependent friendship is a lot more unique and compelling than basic, badly written romantic jealousy.
Honestly, besides Aaron being poorly written I think his character is currently a HUGE miss in a way that feels Bad if the author has even a single iota of a pulse on the scene. There have been several male figure skaters (including a well known pairs skater!!!!) who have been implicated in abuse (including SA) of other skaters. Aaron's character could have really easily touched on those discussion and on power, abuse, and star power but instead is just...Bad Guy Controlling and Eroding Boundaries Because...Bad!!! Like when this a conversation that's actually ongoing in FS spaces? Such a shame.
You mentioned not seeing the male character with migraines and wishing the migraine rep was a bit more prevalent so I had to mention the book Better Hate Than Never by Chloe Liese. The MMC has migraines and I loved the way it was represented. But, also, there is ace rep which was so great and made the spicy scenes SO much better as a reader on the ace spectrum who is picky about those.
SIGN ME TF UP!!!
I love Chloe Liese's books!
Back when this was becoming popular, I was so excited thinking it was Icebreaker by AL Graziadei everyone was talking about and they I learned its a whole other book.
I could not believe there was no ED trigger warning in this book. I had to be really conscious not to mimic Stassie's thoughts about food
the college house parties i went to had the longest bathroom lines EVER, mostly because people would go in groups and be super drunk in there and forget that there’s a whole line outside. when my friends threw house parties i always loved sneaking off into the secret bathroom with no line
I have also read Icebreaker by A.L. Graziadei and gave it five stars! As a hockey fan (go Leafs go!), it was so enjoyable to read because it actually used real NHL teams, and it was obvious the author was also a fan and knew what they were talking about. The scenes on the ice were so awesome and the discussion around the pressure put on young hockey stars to be the best all the time to ensure a future in the NHL was thought-provoking. I tried to read Hannah Grace's Icebreaker and DNF'ed it because I was so disappointed about the lack of real hockey. If anyone else here is a hockey fan like me and wants to read a hockey romance that is actually good, I highly recommend A.L. Graziadei's Icebreaker!!
I am so disappointed that books like Hannah Grace's Icebreaker are lazy and don't include anything real about hockey. She could have made so many people get into hockey and understand how great of a sport it is, but instead, she just used it as an excuse to sexualize hockey players since they tend to have larger frames and be pretty muscular.
Thank you for mentioning Graziadei's book in this video!! ❤
Right! Kinda like how IRL Taylor has helped introduce lots of women to football.
And as a side note, as a KC person, though I can’t speak for the whole city, I feel super protective of her for the mean tweets from a certain candidate for high office. Don’t mess with our girl asshole!
☃️ I saw this book being sold in the Teen section at Walmart. I hate it. Why can't the publishing industry have a maturity rating score like video games, movies, and music so bookseller understand what they're selling 😫
yeah I think the cartoonification of the covers of these books doesn't help. They see cute cartoons on the cover and think 'oh teens, duh'
They kinda had one but recently YA (which originally was very kid oriented) to started to involve more adult books. And I don't mean like death or murder, it now has books full of hard-core smut. They get away with it by claiming to be under YA, but like 17-18 year old YA. Which is fine but they 100% need a system to break up the books in YA.
@@gggthsb to be fair this isn't the fault of the cover itself, I take it as an example of the publishing world avoiding thinking critically about what they sell like the plague. If you can't be bothered to research the littlest information about a book before deciding what to sell it as, that's kind of on you
Also I feel like this is a problem with a lot of stores not designation a new adult section so they are sticking it in the wrong places. Publishing contributes but I don't believe it's actually published as a YA book
As somebody who works for a doctors office and work for an insurance company. Have the neurologist do a peer to peer about the denial. And then have them work out a payment plan with you. Because if you have proof that they gave you a referral that's bullshit
7:30 Have either the neurology clinic or the pediatrician clinic (or both, from my experience as a person who grew up with a ton of specialized medical requirements, the general pediatrician was the first go to), have some clinic *file an appeal* for reconsideration of coverage. Resend the referral (because it has to exist you got the appointment you know) and physically drop it off at local insurance office for better odds they “discover” it.
OMG I CAN DO THAT?!
Thank you so much for saying this!!!
@@ReadswithRachel yes it’s possible lol. It’s only funny because my mom had the same reaction upon discovering that she had been unaware of the “opt in” reimbursement for travel to speciality clinics including gas and lodging (just 10 years of cross state travel nbd).
It’s difficult because they don’t tell you what options exist until you approach them. But yes, and you can approach both clinics about appealing and insurance- just appeal it and my mom broke down and cried many times from the stress so it’s understandable.
@@ReadswithRachelI hope it works, Rachel!!! ❤
@@ReadswithRachel I had to appeal TWICE with my insurance when I had major abdominal surgery because "it should have been outpatient" and they "had asked their internal medicine doctors who review these". I was like, I am about to send you pictures of the giant mass that was removed and the long ass slice down my abdomen that was stapled shut, and then you can talk to my surgeon about whether or not I should have been going the fuck home afterwards, thanks. They ended up paying it. And it was PRE APPROVED. So infuriating the hoops patients and even doctors have to jump through; our health care system kills.
Probably a hot take, even though it shouldn't be, romance books shouldn't be longer than 300pages.
Also, I really need authors to stop fetishizing shortness. As a short adult, I have never viewed myself as a toddler.
A better Hockey romance that I read a few years ago is The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen. (I hope it's as good as my memory thinks it is)
Yes! I was looking for The Year We Fell Down in the comments. (And yes, it still holds up, although the series is a little unhinged, but in a fun way 😂)
I enjoyed The Year We Fell Down! One that I'm really surprised I've never even seen mentioned is Gravity by Tal Bauer, an MM tender hockey romance. I'm kind of stanning it in these comments but I think it's massively underrated.
I just want everyone to understand and appreciate the sheer amount of effort and dedication it takes to maintain a 'greek god' type of physiche. It takes hours each day or nearly double every other day. Most athletes won't look 'defined', but will have healthy layers of fat over their muscles (which the notable exceptions being biceps and chest). This constant emphasis on men being chiseled sculptures is the same men emphasizing women being skinny.
You don't understand how grateful I am for you posting this video at this moment, I'm sitting in my bedroom and a few hours ago I began decluttering multiple boxes of art supplies mixed with random junk I hoarded to find necessary paints for an art project I need to finish by tomorrow morning and all my motivation now is gone and I had no hope and now I can just focus back on it listening about bad romance books 😭😭😭
Glad to help! You’ve got this!!
One thing i hate about things like this is that it downplays the fact that skating for hockey vs figure skating is different (the skates and the ice) and how hard it is to do the stuff pairs skaters do.
The focus on weight sucks, but even singles skaters still have to carefully watch weight gain because it can throw things off in ways that have the potential to cause serious injury. The meal plans should just be designed by actual professionals and should include protein to build muscle for both parties. Because muscle is important to figure skating.
My sister dnfd 30% in and she almost never does that. We had a good laugh about the bazillion nicknames they each had 😅
So instead of giving Aaron a motivation, they just lampshaded that he doesn't have one?
It’s the way I physically cannot tell the difference between the love interest and the villain. Like I zone out for a second and I can’t tell who the scene is about
I love a good story where it turns out the protagonist isn’t as different from the villain as they want to believe, but this absolutely isn’t that
Note from a writer who has a BA in history: always Google names, places, etc. You never know what real world parallel they might have.
I say this because I am currently reading a book about intelligence during the Cold War, and the Stasi was the intelligence agency for East Germany. I realise that "Stasi" is meant to be an infantilisation/cute variant of "Anastasia", but I can't get around that parallel.
I have read one romance series that does a good job introducing characters who will be the protagonists of future books-the Bright Falls trilogy by Ashley Herring Blake. In the first book, Delilah and Claire are the main couple, and Astrid and Iris-who will be the leads in the second and third books, respectively-are Claire’s best friends and Astrid is Delilah’s stepsister. Neither of them ever feel like they’re there to set up a sequel, and in fact, one could argue that Delilah’s sisterly relationship with Astrid is just as relevant to the plot as her romance with Claire.
Oh yes, that series is great, and the fact that all the main and side characters actually feel relevant to each other in some way was a nice touch overall, plus all the couple's actually had chemistry.
Is this a queer romance?! Oh my god I've been looking for some good queer romance. I'll check it out !!!
@scream_kinh614 Yeah, it’s an entire trilogy of queer romance novels!
Wait wait, I understand your confusion but let me explain: Nate being controlling is good while Aaron's controlling nature is a bad thing because Nate good, Aaron bad. Why Nate good? Because Aaron bad. Hope this helps! ☺️
Hahahahaha
In the Uber??? IN THE UBER?!?
The main character of a romance novel's nickname is _Stazi?!!_ Like, the secret police that tortured, imprisoned, abducted, and murdered people in East Germany for fifty years, the fucking _Stazi?_
500 pages. Like... Enough girl. Enough!!!! You can't possibly have that much to say!!! Shhh!!
Hannah Grace's website doesn't have TWs for Nate's jealousy and possessiveness and it should. I'm older, and I read a lot of bodice rippers in the late 90s and early 2000s, and the behaviour of some of these MMCs who are *not* in dark romance would actually fit in kinda nicely with those bodice ripper MMCs and, honestly, I find that kind of alarming and upsetting? In the days of yore, bodice rippers were very much a subgenre of romance on their own--and, yes, they fulfilled the RWA's romance definition of a) a central love story, wherein the main plot is about the characters falling in love and struggling to make their relationship(s) work and 2) having their happy ever after, or happy for now. But you knew what you were almost certainly going to be getting into when you picked up a Bertice Small. Dark romance is kinda in many ways bodice rippers dialled up to 11.
And all disk horse aside about the subgenre, but if I want to go dip my toes into dark romance at least I'm going to know precisely what I'm getting into with those MMCs. They're gonna be mean, and petty, and jealous, and possessive, and violent, and rough, and do probably bad dirty talk (fanfic writers can be so much better at that), and et cetera et cetera et cetera. I'm just really tired, actually, of these dudes who are *not* in dark romance (or bodice rippers) displaying jealous, territorial, possessive, emotionally stunted, awful behaviour. I object to picking up a book that's not labelled dark romance and finding Nates Hawkins and Christians Grey. I shouldn't be blindsided by it and I feel unsafe in the genre without finding specific recs for "MMC is actually always nice to the FMC and doesn't act jealous and territorial".
Absolutely! We should have love interests who portray healthy behaviors in a typical romcom instead of abusive behavior.
@@DarwinRoger893 Yeah. If and when I'm up to reading that sort of behaviour from MMCs, I'll go looking for it. Dark romance is right there, or, if I'm feeling really spicy, there's stuff on AO3 I can find. I don't expect my escapist fiction to teach life lessons, but I do expect it to be careful about adhering not just to overarching genre expectations, but *subgenre* expectations. If I'm picking up a rom-com about collegiate athletes with a cutesy, brightly-coloured cover, I honestly don't think it's okay to be blindsided by toxic and abusive behaviour from said protags until and unless there's a big subplot about going to therapy and learning not to be like that. Even then: warn.
@@yarnpenguinyes yes yes! It's a big issue that the subgenres have all started to merge together. If i pick up a lighthearted romance, I want the love interest to be respectful, caring and loving. I want them to portray healthy behaviors because that's what I signed up for. Dark romances are a huge mess because the authors think making the love interest an asshole and borderline rapist makes the romance dark.
I feel like in a book like this it’s even more of a problem, since it’s interspersed with so much like, healthy romance stuff. Having jealous controlling behaviours alongside proper healthy consent talk, without properly acknowledging that it’s unhealthy behaviour, it normalises the possessive stuff.
@@AwsomenessRainyeah don't add abuse with healthy romance, that's a horrible recipe
Why does he keep speaking like that? I’m at 37:59 at the time I’m writing this and he literally says shit like “Example text here, Anastasia.” No one says another person’s name that much
It’s so weird like imagine speaking to someone and almost every time they say your name to end the sentence(examples using my online name):
“Let’s get lunch, Vixen.”
“You can’t hide from me, Vixen.”
“You’re so bad, Vixen.”
It’s so annoying to hear like please stop writing/speaking like that I beg of you😭
It's a sales technique that supposedly builds rapport; it reminds me of used-car salesmen. Incidentally, it's also what a friend of mine's church taught them to do when they were trying to convert people. She did it to me and I told her it was weird and off-putting and to please stop.
It’s something I’ve been very aware of in my own writing lately. I probably only call my friends by name when I’m trying to get their attention. If I’m teasing them with a goofy nickname I might use it more often, but that’s really it. It’s one of those little things that make dialogue less believable
@@shinyumbreon696I work as a cashier and the sales thing is 100% it. Upper management want us to use the customer’s name a couple times (we make phone number accounts so we see their names lol) and my district manager even confirmed it’s exactly what car dealerships do!
okay! i do not wanna be annoying and “um actually” 🤓….but the ice in figure skating and the ice in hockey is at different temps so they realistically wouldn’t be sharing a rink 😭 they would injure themselves on the wrong ice.
As a massive fan of skating I was so excited about this book and so incredibly let down. There were so many issues it's hard to even know where to start. The representation of skating is so wild lol. We kept being told that Anastasia had this regimented schedule with zero proof of that being the case. Skating at that level requires so much. There's no way that she could be going to college and doing well in her classes, partying with that much regularity, hanging out with love interests, while also training at an elite level for skating. Both of the main characters were incredibly annoying and unlikeable. I also felt that this level of explicit scenes was over the top for a story about college students. Yes, I know they're adults but it just gave me an icky feeling to the point where I was skipping over all the scenes.
I think the most sympathetic and nuanced character was the cat who threw up on the bed.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the scene where Anastasia has sax with Nathan while he’s dressed as Gru from Despicable Me.
My brain just wants to forget 😩
@@ReadswithRachel understandable. I'm sure the scene never "Gru" on you. One could say it was pretty despicable.
Damn that was good 😂😂😂
@@karlispovisils5297 u coud say it was.. gru-some 👀👀
One thing I found hysterical about the sequel is that Ryan pops up again-having relations with the fmc of THAT book. I’m tempted to check out the third book just to see if he appears to have more relations with *that* fmc.
the books should all be about ryan and his strings of healthy casual relationships, like mikael blomkvist
@@witchecheveria9417he seems way more interesting
@@Thatdumbgremlin the ultimate Chad of the trilogy
Honestly good for him.
I DNF'd this in the AMAZON SAMPLE, which is the first 10%. All I remember thinking is that Stassy's character shot right past assertive and into straight-up mean for no reason. I didn't want her to get a romance and a happy ending.
In general, it doesn't surprise me that hockey took over the sports romance genre: it's an excuse to feature unrealistically tall buff MMCs who also speak French.
me reading the poppy war 💀 60 pages of the libby sample and i knew the author was a clown lol
@@Kam_i_ How come? I mean i read babel and it's one of my favorites, the poppy war is on my tbr tho, what didn't you like about it?
@@hanakesseibi.5b.273 my reasons are a little complicated, but it boils down to an underlying issue with the concept: instead of using historical events, figures, and wars to inspire an original plot, Kuang directly copied real historical events and people into her novel, sometimes barely changing the names at all if she thought her Western audience wouldn’t pick up on it. This was the reason I stopped reading, because I had a horrible feeling her lack of originality in the early chapters would result in a poorly executed mess during the later sections of the book. Some examples of the early “copy-paste” history she writes in the beginning include Sun Tzu being called Sun Zi (literally just his Chinese name 孫子, with no tones), the Century of Humiliation is called the Age of Humiliation, the Warring States Period is called the Era of Warring States, et cetera.
The early chapters cover a vast amount of exposition for this “fictional” country’s history, but it’s clear the author had a poor grasp of the context and importance of these events and time periods when she wrote the book. This is forgivable in a teenage YA author, but it becomes a huge problem for the later sections which I’ve heard attempt to take a “darker” tone. The first half of the book is a standard YA magic school plot, with all of the overdone tropes. The second half apparently takes a sharp left turn, and the main character ends up committing genocide at the end of the book.
The reason I am calling Kuang a clown is because she dedicated her book to Iris Chang, the author of the Rape of Nanking. Chang was one of the most influential journalists and activists for Chinese history in the last three decades, and rose to incredible fame for her powerful English-language compilation of the horrors of the Nanking massacre committed by the invading Japanese troops in 1937-1938. It is the opinion of many readers that Kuang appropriated Chang’s work by inserting scenes directly “inspired” by her book into the later parts of The Poppy War, purely for shock value, allowing her surface-level YA novel to be marketed as darker or edgier.
It’s also some people’s opinion that Kuang does not have the authority to claim the horrors of Nanking for her own, given that she is of the Chinese-American diaspora. The Poppy War opened up discourses on the diversity of experiences within the Chinese diaspora and the way Americans (often) tend to market BIPOC authors as being able to speak to the unifying experiences of their ethnicities. I don’t have an opinion on that specifically as I am not of the diaspora, but it’s a conversation that’s being had.
Also (sorry this is so long!) the main character commits the equivalence of the USA dropping the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the book, except it’s worse because she massacres the entire island of Japan with magic, or something. I’ll probably finish the book just because I think it’s so fascinating that a novel with this level of cultural insensitivity can be published without being checked.
but anyways, Poppy War was her debut 😭 I want to read Babel anyways because my friends keep recommending it, so I expect she learned a lot of lessons from her first three books!
@@Kam_i_ i think RUclips deleted a comment you wrote before this 😭 hope you enjoy babel!!
On wash days, I sleep with a silk wrap around my head for my curly hair. The silk wrap lives on my nightstand. One time I put it on and I'm smoothing down the edges and there's a strange lump in it. My sweet, precious, perfect elderly cat had thrown up in it and then scrunched it up so I wouldn't find it. 😮💨 There was so much puke crumb in my hair, dude
**Rhysand vs Tamlin: Jealousy (**32:33**)**
This is what ticks me off in a lot of romance books, and what I wish the "besties" in romance books called out. IRL, I've called out friends who let their significant others be toxic to them, yet they get upset about toxicity from other people displaying those SAME behaviors. This can be ex-partners or the partners of others. I wish romance MCs were actually spoken to by their friends. I would love to see book besties go "Hey, this is some hypocrisy that it's fine for your new partner to pull the same conniving, jealous bull that that other guy did. What's that about?" Like, iunno, it rubs me the wrong way how romance books paint this as "it's completely fine to repeatedly fall in love with people who do you wrong because, at the time, it's love!" It's so refreshing when love interests break the cycle instead of fit into it but alas 🤧
Same problem I have with the Colleen Hoover/Blake Lively flap; they try to write about Intimate Partner Violence, and get it completely wrong.
Can I take a moment to appreciate your censoring? I crack up every time I hear that "oh no" 😂😂😂
YOU GODDESS!! You’re dropping so many goodies so fast, I’m so happyyyy.
Yay! Thank you!
im 30 seconds in and im assuming rachel will get into this but it’s insane that the author wanted to include a muslim best friend character, didn’t do any research to make her an accurate and well-written muslim character, and then when she faced backlash, just made the character white rather and called it a day 💀
wait whatt tell us more! Was this some well known drama in the booktok sphere?
@@Kam_i_ so i never finished it and it’s been a hot minute since i tried starting it, but when i originally read it (self/online published at the time), anastasia’s best friend (the one who dated robby iirc) was a hijabi muslim girl. BUT since she was written as doing a bunch of haram things such as premarital sex, with no explanation in the text for why she was acting out of the bounds of her religion, there was a bunch of backlash against the author hannah grace. then, rather than taking down her book to rework this character to be more respectfully written, she quickly just changed her name and appearance to make her a white girl or at least no longer muslim.
It is amazing how little ice time is in this book as you describe it. I learned to skate as an adult and it seems like it would be easy to show a little understanding of what a shared rink would entail. Figure skaters leave patches of little divots from working on their spins. Hockey players leave ruts when they dig in their heels for fast turns and stops. Each can feel weird under your runners when you don’t expect them. Now I want a F/F hockey book (after I check out the Good Icebreaker™️).
We need more good f/f sports novels
I don't understand the idea of having a hockey player sub for your figure skating partner at all, they're such different disciplines even if they overlap- hey, I have 6months to make this quarterback my competition level partner for salsa/ballet/tap dancing, I mean, he's in good shape both require you to use your feet! She doesn't know a singles figure skater or someone in another level who would be a better fit to sub in???
Also appreciate your suggestions for fixes, the fact that his dad is a serial cheater would have even given an easy pro-therapy avenue to discuss why he is being toxic about her relaunching with others so he could GET OVER IT, it was right there!
I was actually kind of shocked at the amount of smut. the way people talked about it (I don't use TikTok but I saw some yt shorts and a couple spoiler-free reviews) made it seem like a pretty cool, cute-funny romance or something. instead it's literally just a lot of bad college porn. should've been a movie or miniseries on Netflix instead, maybe it would've worked better as a comedy screenplay?
I do find it strange that Nate managed to get off of breaking Aaron's arm, but not for going up and punching him at the competition. Which sure it was because he kissed Stasia, but all the school is gonna see is that Nate has been accused of assaulting the same student twice and the second time is confirmed to have happend. As well that Stasia isn't really a non biased witness because she's his girlfriend so of course she's gonna try and protect him. I could almost expect that Aaron with all his money and pettiness would have filed a police report for what happened as a final way to screw both of them. Then think about the video being used against him as a sign that Nate has a pattern of bad behavior that even his friends joke about it. Could have started a conversation to fix Nate's behavior whether he gets punished or not for what happened and he might actually have to find another school or profession. I also think Aaron could have been a better antagonist by having him be like a toxic perfectionist that is a result of his parents, it bleeds into his relationship with Stasia as well as comes from their coach. The reason Stasia deals with him at all is that she also is a perfectionist, Aaron has more skill/success than she does and that he does occasionally support and help her personally and as a skater. So his beef with Nate and not any other guy is because the other guys were on her schedule, Nate is messing up her schedule and changing their usual dynamic. So Aaron is upset that this random guy has come in and is jeopardizing all the work and sacrifices they both have done as partners for their sport to be for nothing.
I find it funny that as a life long hockey fan, (whos first crush was a hockey player) you would think hockey romance would be my thing but the behavior of hockey romance readers has completely turned me off from ever reading them.
I was wondering if it was The Cutting Edge fanfic but Ice Princess is much more likely.
I had a friend almost exactly like Aaron. The emotional abuse he leveled against me and another friend went on for over 10 years because he always had a way of explaining it, gaslighting us, or manipulating us into turning our focus on each other instead of him. And while he'd never admit it, it's because he enjoyed hurting other people because he's miserable in himself.
i'm so glad you mentioned the other icebreaker because i felt like i was taking crazy pills. whenever i'd hear this book referenced, i'd think like "oh i read and like that one" and then i'd see the cover and be like "that... is not the book i read... wtf did i read??" 😆
OMG, Check Please! by Ngozi Ukazu will always be THE hockey romance story to me, as a comics reader. Its a little funny watching the Hets try and recreate the magic of that comic but you CANT
I couldn’t take this book seriously from the beginning because this is just such a fanfic premise. They pop up every four years during the winter olympics, like clockwork, across most fandoms. I’ve read a couple and some of them are good, but there’s a lot more I’m willing to let slide in fanfic than I am in a published novel. I’ll turn my brain off and suspend my disbelief when I’m scrolling ao3 in the dark at 3am, but when I spend real human money on a book (or take time out of my day to get it from the library), I expect at least a modicum of research (and also more believable characters…)
Is it just me or do romance stories now want to replicate the: Bad reletionship until the male character points it out from ACOTAR? because I feel that many are doing the exact same thing
most unrealistic part is university of california making a new campus instead of trying to cram more students into the existing campuses despite not having enough space (esp for housing).
lowkey i wonder if she got permission to use the UC trademark for this, they are infamously and annoyingly litigious
Mother never lets us starve. Been waiting for this one and did mrs. Rachel deliver
1:05:41 I don’t understand how she has NO trauma from that. Like… what? It astounded me.
Not a Hockey fan, but there's a great Hockey romance comic called Check, Please! It's adorable and also gay
I’ve been meaning to check this out from my library!
IT IS SO GOOD. It has such good and healthy rep! It discusses mental health issues, internalized homophobia, the gays winning in the end, and is just so amazing. I was a fan back when it was a tumblr blog. I'm so happy to see Ngozi Ukazu talked about and the series getting to be experienced all over again
I just finished the other Icebreaker (the gay one), so I wanna reread Check, Please so bad. When that webcomic ended, I was bawling.
Yes oh my god!! Check, Please! Is my one and only hockey romance
@@ReadswithRachel I've actually just now finished re-reading it because it was on my mind - you can find it online on the official website!
i read icebreaker (the one you liked) bcuz i saw your video of it and i loved it!
this made my whole day, i am so glad!
Anastasia being nicknamed Stassi tells me she watches Vanderpump Rules
sorry to hear about america health insurance and hope your son is doing great
it baffles me that anastasia is a) doing quads as a pair skater (which is incredibly unusual); b) doing quads without being an incredibly high-level athlete??? struggling with a quad LUTZ nonetheless (that's like the second hardest jump before the axel)??? the only couple i've seen doing quads are the literal reigning olympic champions and granted i'm pretty sure they were the first ones to win the olympics with quads because the previous champions didn't even do them.
I have not read this book, but after hearing this in depth review, I already came up some changes.
A) make a dramedy or a romantic psychological thriller.
B) have this be 200-300 pages less.
C) take Nate out and stick with Aaron and Ryan.
D) have aaron still be arron and every time he controls her diet, she uses her schedule as the ultimate form of control.
E) have ryan be a main character and the main love interest. They start with the friends with benefits and be a safe haven for Anastasia.
As Ryan observes Aaron’s manipulation and how he treats her, he suggests being her skating partner.
Don’t know if I make him a newbie or have him being an experienced ice skater.
F) Aaron keeps jeopardizing their practices and at one point “seduces” Anastasia before she decides to have a committed relationship with Ryan.
G) to make sure this is not depressing from beginning to end, I would have it end happily with a somewhat unrealistic ending: aaron getting arrested or him moving away.
omg the sound effects for the bleeps are sending me!
You can file a compliant to the insurance that referred you and to the doctors office that didn't check your coverage. Then you can get all of the paperwork together and file an appeal against the health insurance company. They will try to get away with not paying but since they sent you to a specialist then they cannot deny your coverage. Hope that helps, all the best.
why is two teams sharing a rink such a big deal? are they practicing 12hrs a day?
Idk if this is a hot take or not, but I've read both MF and MM sports romances and the MM ones are almost always better. They're just more interesting to me because there are so many more angles on team dynamics, the pressure on players to fit into heteronormative stereotypes, and how we view professional athletes to talk about.
I was genuinely so excited to read this book. The cover made it look like it was going to be a cute romance and when I heard there's was smut I figured I could just skim past it for the plot. I barely got halfway through it before I gave up 😭
This reminds me of a RUclips video where a hockey player actually swapped places with a figure skater and it was the most interesting thing ever. And surprisingly they had way more on screen chemistry than these two characters.
"Stasi" as a nickname is.... a choice. Extreme DDR vibes, I have to say. So romantic.
The clip of Thing from Addams family had me laugh so bad. Also, thank you for this - I saw so many people recommend this thing I was thinking of maybe trying it, but by the time you got to chapter 2 I decided I have zero desire to read this.
45:37 sounds like something from an Ali Hazelwood book
I LOVED Ice Princess growing up. Seeing the clips in here brings me so much joy! Far more than the book itself!
There are so many things wrong with this book but the thing that EXTREMELY bugs me as a Colorado native and survivor of the seasonal ski industry is that there are almost no independently owned ski resorts left in Colorado, let alone in Eagle County LMAO !!! Like what, does this man own Ski Cooper ???? Sunlight Mountain ??? Otherwise, Nathan's dad would have to somehow own one of the huge ski industry megacorporations (namely, Vail Resorts), and therefore would probably be a billionaire. Also Maple Hill is the least Californian name town name on the planet (is also a veteran of the UC system). I literally just cannot suspend my disbelief for anything in this book, from the setting, to the plot, to the character motivations, to little nitpicky details like the ski thing. It just smacks of a refusal to research anything or even really think things through. Ugh. Anyway !! Thanks for this great review, as always.
1:11:37
Nathan already was a very iffy protagonist for me (for both having the depth of a cardboard cutout and being super jealous of any guy who breathes around Anastasia including his own FRIENDS) but this line is where he lost me (second place goes to the "i'll put a baby in you" thing)
Was he trying to allege that the therapist was in cahoots with Aaron and helping him break Anastasia and him (Nathan) apart??? That's just a woman doing her job! You don't know that, dickhead! Screw this character, honestly. We're supposed to laud him because he's not Aaron but there's so many red flags in the way he treats Anastasia (and women in general) that are treated like cute character quirks.
Also here's a hockey emoji for Rachel because her videos are great 🏒
This is just “willful woman being put in her place by a real man.”
to the ‘friend’ that recommended me this book, i read it and then i blanked out a bit before proceeding to slam the book and threw it away at a thrift store.
first of all, out of all the nicknames anastasia couldve had, stassy (sounds like a staph infection) was the best to come up with? what happened to anya? what happened stacia, stacy, ana?? anything really 💀⁉️
also, the ‘friend’ told me that it was a cute romance book?
i was so dumb and naive, nothing about it was cute or romantic to me 🧍🏻♀️ i felt like i was reading a sitcom and then the smut scenes…
yknow, maybe its bcs im aroace but what in the world were those smut scenes?
what is going on exactly? god forbid i would know.
also, absolutely love your takes rachel 🤩 i always watch them when im doing my assignments, keeps me entertained and motivated ❤
Stas is an abbreviation used for the male name Anastas, the female one should be Nastya
@@teslashark oh yeah i thought there was smth strange abt her nickname, thanks for pointing it out more precisely
it's the side by side quads that threw me - and you're telling me you're NOT part of the national team ???? couldn't deal with it as someone who knows anything about figure skating
"BOOKTOKS HOCKEY ROMANCE is a miss" What a shocker!
I know nothing about either of these books both Hockey romances named 'Icebreaker'
but that second one won as far as covers go. I mean, it looks warm, cozy, and dynamic. There's intimacy being displayed by the protagonists, perhaps a hint at the chemistry they have within the story. There's a lot more detail too, like with the bandages on the red-head's hands. Then you look at the first one and the two "love interests" are just standing there....looking at each other...in what is essentially a white void...I guess I can guess from the cover that they're start off with a kind of snarky odd-couple relationship at first but that's really all I'm getting. Honestly, the only negative I'll give the second cover is just the fact that they both have the same hair cut.
Anyway, I now have a library hold for that other icebreaker book, I guess. Very regretful that when I searched for it, _this_ book was the only one that came up until I did a "deep" search.
The other Icebreaker book actually has a lot of hockey action and culture in it. So that was a plus for me.
Thank you for what you said abt Henry. As an autistic adult 🙏 i hate getting talked down to. Also, like others said, this comes off as a Cutting Edge (and maybe Ice Princess crossover) fanfiction 😂😂😂 and the chemistry of the lead actors in Cutting Edge would blow these leads out of the water... oh, and lines at the bathroom were a college party thing for sure. 🏒
I’m so sorry about your insurance troubles. I hope you’re able to have it worked out and you don’t have to pay $800! Love your videos as always!
Does the school not have a women's hockey team too?
Not that I saw, sadly, because this could've used more women!
It’s such a strange gendering of sports… I wanna see a romance between a buff female hockey player and a male ice skater now.
My God, I forgot how annoying this book was. I gave it a 2 because I thought it had some promise and I didn't completely hate it in the beginning. Everything with Aaron just made the book unbearable and the epilogue irritated the crap out of me. As someone who is a hockey fan, you don't finish college and win the Stanley cup the next year. If he was actually on the top line of an NHL team, he maybe would have played maybe a year in college before getting called up to the NHL. Also the getting pregnant in the epilogue pissed me off because I remember Anastasia saying earlier that she wanted to adopt. I'm a romance reader but I can only tolerate so much stupidity.