2.5 If You Wish Stars ⭐️
Spicy Level: 0/5

I wanted to like this but just couldn’t get into it! I do think it might be a bit of a disservice to this book, having just come off an EPIC friends-to-lovers romance. I know I shouldn’t be comparing, but my brain is a crazy person and doesn’t want to listen to logic...

𝙎𝙮𝙣𝙤𝙥𝙨𝙞𝙨:
Harlow has just broken up with her boyfriend, but she’s not that sad about it. She’s also quit her job because her boss is a total “bro” and takes advantage of her. At a work conference, she wins a romantic getaway where she can choose where to go. She asks her best friend, Teddy, to come along, and they choose Maple Falls—where Teddy has been asked to be part of a charity hockey team, as he’s a professional hockey player and ready to come back after healing from an ACL injury. The two start to realise that maybe they think of each other as more than friends, but don’t want to upset their friendship dynamic... or do they?

𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙁𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨:
I really, really, really want to find a Friends to Lovers where the characters are actual friends to lovers and not already in love with each other and just afraid to tell each other. I think that the problem with this is that both these characters are already irrevocably in love with each other and they need to try and save their friendship while exploring a "new" relationship. They are both scared to ruin what they have.

What I did like though was that even though Harlow has a little past trauma from an accidental almost drowning and some family issues that make it difficult to deal with certain situations, Teddy is absolutely adorable as he helps her deal with this!

It is very clear that these two are best friends, but it's because they were such good friends that I felt like I didn't like this that much. The whole time they're together they keep sharing these inside jokes that half the time I didn't get, and just ended up feeling like an awkward outside third wheel creepily watching their relationship. They would reference things or talk about things that happened in the past or say things that were funny to the two of them but made no sense to me. But besides this, the chemistry between them felt forced or just had to be believed because they had been friends for so long.

The writing also felt very chaotic, and it was very difficult at times to sometimes keep up with Harlow's sporadic thoughts because she 'squirrelled" in terms of ideas. It was very choppy to keep up with what was happening and at times I felt like the main character acted like a 12-year-old girl who'd never seen a boy before, not someone who was nearly 30 years old.

Something that also kinda weirded me out is this felt like Icebreaker Fan Fiction... The TOWN is called Maple Hills... which is the University where Icebreaker and the rest of the books are set. Also, the Charity Hockey Team is called the "Icebreakers" with the theme song "Ice Ice Baby". I know it might all be coincidental but it was a little fishy

𝙏𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨 and 𝙈𝙞𝙘𝙧𝙤 𝙏𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙨:
▶ Dual POV
▶ Forced Proximity
▶ Friends to Lovers
▶ Hockey Romance
▶ GrumpyXSunshine but she's the grump
▶ Golden Retriever
▶ Nicknames

Ultimately this had all the formaic things that you would see in a "friend to lovers" but it just felt very cliché and there was no real depth and no real connection. I didn't like the fact that it was basically insta-love and I didn't see much development between the two characters taking place.

Thank you to Ellie Hall and Netgalley for the gifted copy.
All thoughts and opinions are my own.