Trade Deadline

Definitely a solid 3.5.

As I've mentioned a few times before, hockey romances are my comfort zone and I just loved getting to read one during these times when my mood has been increasingly bad. And I'm glad it cheered me up.

While I still maintain that I loved Avon Gale's Scoring Chances series more, this series has also been fun, especially with the authors making the Venom team and it's camaraderie something to root for. So it felt a bit jarring to see the proceedings move to a different team, that too not a very good one. This also meant that the time spent with the team itself was considerably less when compared to the previous books, but I somehow didn't miss that element. The story was also a much more quieter one, with hardly any conflict and kinda sweet.

I really liked both Daniel and Micah as characters. I found Daniel's uncertainty about his hockey future, his conflict between his competitive nature and wanting to play for his childhood favorite team, and just his love for his old teammates , all felt very realistic and I liked how chill he was despite his worries. Micah on the other hand was a delight. I don't think I've read a romance before with a marine biologist love interest, so that was cool. And I absolutely adored his interactions with his favorite dolphin, as well as his passion for conservation and restoration of sea creatures to their natural habitats.

Even though both of them reconnect after two decades, their comfort level with each other was instantaneous and even though this wasn't the sort of fiery chemistry I'm used to in romance novels these days, it was such a easy and charming relationship. Just like they felt at ease with each other, I enjoyed reading about their bonding with Danny's kids and even the junior hockey players. It was a charming love story without much drama and I liked that a lot.

As always, I love when previous characters show up for cameos and I enjoyed the Venom's appearances. Tristan is a sweetheart and I love it whenever he shows up, and Morley was as always funny with his dudebro jokes even though he seemed grumpy sometimes. And I couldn't stop laughing during all his talk about fanfics, rivals to lovers tropes and coffee shop AUs - it's not the kind of nerdy talk you expect from jocks and I thought it was adorable. I'm hoping the next book is about him and we'll get so much more of this.

To conclude, this was the charming, drama free hockey romance with lovable characters that I didn't know I needed. I had a sweet time while reading and it left me feeling good. And I'm already excited for the spinoff which was mentioned, though I can't find the synopsis anywhere and hope it's about the players I'm expecting.

My least favorite of the series, tbh. I felt like their relationship happened so, so fast. Bellzie is also going on and on about how his team isn't great and he isn't enjoying his time playing anymore. I ended up skimming his complaining because he goes on about it forever! It was easy to see what his decision was going to be.