3.5 Rueful Michelangelo ⭐️
Spicy Level: 🌶️🌶️.5/5

You know how books are called devious because they are cute cartoon covers and then inside they are the dirtiest smut??? THIS IS ALMOST LIKE THIS.... but instead of smut, we get pain and sadness and just HEAVY... It's almost deceptive and not in the way I like. I think why this hit so hard is because it was VERY emotionally heavy, and since I normally don't typically read such emotional books, I was not prepared. I wanted to go into something light-hearted. I wanted to go into something that was going to be a sweet, almost fluffy romance. And while there are elements of sweet and fluffy, they are heavily shadowed by the trauma our characters need to work through.

Nick Sorensen is an NHL player who is returning to the game after a tragic plane crash killed six of his closest friends and teammates, leaving him the only one to survive the crash. Having been dropped by his former team, he's now been picked up by another; so he is dealing with the trauma of survivor's guilt, the loss of his previous life; as well as having lost his best friend and roommate. He is struggling to re-assimilate into a new life that requires him to move on. Something he is not ready for.

Then we have Alyssa Compton, who is dealing with her own childhood trauma. She's tried to turn her life around by becoming an interior designer for the worst person on the planet - however, mostly doesn't let this get her down. Her friend (and client) happens to be married to Nick's teammate. Nick's coach has given him an ultimatum: either he has to decorate his apartment because he's literally living with one chair and basically a cardboard box as a table, or he has to go to therapy. And since spending money on couch cushions is a lot more safe than talking about your feelings Nick hires Alyssa to help him.

My issue with this is I didn't particularly hate it, but I didn't love it either. I felt that for a lot of the novel, she and Nick were constantly almost fighting, at ends with each other, misunderstanding each other or disagreeing. There wasn't really a connection between them or attraction (besides the fact that they were near each other). It was like there was chemistry but NOT ENOUGH. While it was sweet that they developed into friends and that both were able to help each other through their various traumas and emotional conflicts, there was just something missing about their relationship that I didn't see.

Unfortunately, by the time they ended up getting together and realizing that they wanted to be with each other, the book ended. So it was like a tease and then done - where you just had to imagine their love growing deeper. It was also really strange because I listened to this in audio and while this has dual narration it was also in third person. That doesn't make sense to me why you would have two different people speaking when they weren't even really talking from their perspective anyway. It could have just been read by one person because they weren't talking for themselves; they were talking about characters.

I'm not sad I read it; I just think I would have liked it more if it gave me what I was expecting. I imagined that cute, light and fluffy forced proximity of the grumpy hockey player and gorgeous interior designer...and while I got that I got A WHOLE LOT MORE SADNESS. I did like their conversations about art and how that essentially helped them connect and open up to each other. I also liked that she managed to work through her pride with her brother and their issues with their mom. It was sweet...

But overall, they just didn't seem like a forever couple. They seemed like a couple that would get together in passing because they needed to heal and whilst they could eventually end up as a forever couple, we were never shown that.

Tropes:
▶ Forced Proximity
▶ BossXEmployee
▶ Dual POV (But also third person)
▶ Hockey Romance
▶ Trauma Bonding
▶ Found Family

If you are the type of person who LOVES emotionally driven stories about healing grief while also finding romance - this would be perfect for you! Unfortunately, I am not that person so it was a little miss for me...

Thank you so much Dreamscape Media, Netgalley and Katie Kennedy for my gifted audio copy!
All thoughts and opinions are my own