4 Tinkerbell Stars ⭐️
Spicy Level:🌶️🌶️🌶️/5

This was good, but not Offside good...

𝙎𝙮𝙣𝙤𝙥𝙨𝙞𝙨:
This follows Seraphina Carter (the younger sister of the MC in Offside) who had a one-night stand with an amazing guy at a Halloween Party, but they don't exchange names. Now she moves into her Brother's "Hockey" House with his teammates and is a little surprised to find out one of her new roommates IS THE GUY! Tyler Donahue the GOALIE on her brother's team, and one of his best friends who her brother will literally murder if he found out that he and her had sex. So cue the tension-filled and crazy dynamics because these two have an undeniable attraction, magnetism, and sexual tension towards each other so will they or won't they?

𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙁𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨:
So I am going to jump into why I preferred Offside to Shutout, and it was because it felt like Carter and Bailey felt more mature. Now, even though this one dealt with serious topics of mental illness and cancer, it just felt a little bit more juvenile in how the characters were dealing with the situation. And I don't mean juvenile as in "bad" at how they are being handled, I just meant that these felt like young adults needing to learn how to handle difficult situations. It's blatantly obvious these are university students. Their issues, lack of communication, behaviour, and just how they acted felt very "college and young adult", and it didn't feel as mature and emotionally driven as we had seen in Chase and Bailey's story.

Sera has ADHD and she struggles with it and it's impacts her life. She's also got a lot of stress and anxiety relating to her mother's cancer diagnosis and the implications of what that means for her and her possible future.

Tyler is the silent broody type. He doesn't open up very easily, and he doesn't communicate easily, so the fact that he does so with Sera is a big thing. He was just an utter sweetheart in how well he handled her mental illness as well as being there to support her. Way more than her brother because he NEVER NOTICED she was actually struggling... Like worst bro award ever!

AND THAT IS WHY THIS FELT SO OFF FOR ME... because I absolutely loved Carter in the previous book and he just felt very different from that guy that I adored because in offside he was so thoughtful and caring. Yet in this, he was huffy, aggressive and immature at times and it really bothered me that he didn't even realize that his sister was struggling with what she was going through, even if she didn't open up to him until the end.

Overall there was a lot of non-communication that happened and I think that is something that you learn as you become a little bit more of an "adult" as Sera chose not to talk about her struggles and because of that internalisation this ended up having a bigger impact on her.

𝙏𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨:
▶ Hockey Romance
▶ Forced Proximity
▶ One Night Stand
▶ Brother's Team Mate and Friend
▶ Broody Goalie X Party Girl
▶ Roommates to Lovers

and 𝙈𝙞𝙘𝙧𝙤 𝙏𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨:
▷ Under Table Touching
▷ Cages her with his arms
▷ Rolled Sleeves/Forearms
▷ Pierced MMC
▷ Brat
▷ Brings Her Drinks/Food
▷ Texting (a lot)
▷ Good Girl
▷ Were you mauled by a bear?

In the end, I didn't hate this... I think I just had higher expectations given how much I loved Offside that I thought this would be just as amazing!