🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 3.9/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Icebreaker yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
I went into Icebreaker expecting a fun enemies-to-lovers hockey romance and yeah, I got that. But what I did not sign up for was Aaron. This man is a piece of work and I cannot believe it took everyone this long to see it. Stacy saw it eventually. That’s what matters. But wow.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
Anastasia — Staci has worked her entire life to make Team USA as a competitive figure skater. She’s got a scholarship at the University of California, Maple Hills, she’s on the figure skating team, and she’s got regionals coming up in five weeks. The plan is solid.
Then someone sabotages the cooling system at the rink. The ice melts. There were only two rinks and now both teams — the figure skating team and the hockey team — have to share. Which means Staci is suddenly sharing ice time with the hockey team.
The Setup
Nate notices someone acting fidgety at the joint team meeting and pulls them aside after. Turns out this person hooked up with a girl who had a boyfriend, and the boyfriend threatened him. The implication is clear: the sabotage is connected. The whole thing is being treated as a prank, but a really petty and destructive one.
Meanwhile, Staci is hooking up with Ryan on a casual basis. Aaron, her skating partner, is weirdly jealous of everything she does even though they’re not together.
From the jump, Aaron is giving weird jealousy vibes even though he and Staci are just partners. He’s possessive, he’s condescending, and he has opinions about her personal life that nobody asked for. But Staci trusts him. They’ve worked together long enough that she gives him the benefit of the doubt more than she probably should.
Meanwhile, there’s been equipment sabotage at the rink. The cooling system goes down, the ice melts, and suddenly both the figure skating team and the hockey team are sharing one rink. Regionals are five weeks out for Staci. This is not great timing.
Getting Closer
There are required team building exercises to get the skaters and hockey players comfortable with each other, and it works. Everyone is at least social by the time there’s a party. Nate offers Staci his bathroom, they end up alone in his room, and one thing leads to another. And yeah.
A few days later, Nate and Lola’s boyfriend send their respective people jerseys with their last names on them. Sweet gesture. Except Staci is told the gift has to be opened on a video call — which means she’s on camera, in bed, with Ryan still there. Ryan is her FWB who’s been phasing out their arrangement because he wants to be with a girl named Olivia. So he’s technically still in her bed but nothing is happening, they literally just fell asleep watching a movie. Nate sees this on the video call and is not thrilled.
Lola and Ryan are immediately like, okay, why are you avoiding Nate? And Staci has to admit what happened between them. She’s been steering clear because she can tell Nate wants more than a hookup, and she is not in that place. She doesn’t want a relationship. She just wanted him.
Nate decides he’s had enough and shows up at her practice. Stacy is trying to land a quad, flies into the boards, hits her head hard. Her coach tells her to drop the quad and keep the triple. Stacy starts crying. Then everyone notices she’s bleeding. Nate steps in immediately — he’s trained in first aid — wraps her head and takes her to the hospital. That’s kind of the turning point. Stacy decides it’s time for a truce. He’s obviously a good guy.
The Uber Incident
They all go out, Lola and Staci and a bunch of hockey players, and Stacy and Nate end up dancing and grinding and then piling into a cab back. Stacy ends up on his lap, which leads to them fooling around in the Uber with a full car of people. It’s a lot. Anyway. They get back to his place, she’s putting in the wrong door code, Ryan’s code, she explains the situation, and Nate tells her he wants her to want him when she’s sober. He’s not going to sleep with her right now. She ends up sleeping in Henry’s room instead of going home alone.
He was jealous, he admits it. He assumed if he slept with her she’d disappear. She, meanwhile, only wanted to hook up and assumed he wanted a relationship. They’re both doing their best.
The Find Me Before Midnight Challenge
Nate wants her, so she challenges him: find me at a campus party before midnight and you can do whatever you want to me. He hunts through every single party. At quarter to midnight he video calls her. She’s been sitting in his bedroom the whole time. She convinced his roommates to throw a party after he left and told nobody. What a move.
He gets there. And then Summer, a girl he’s been chasing since early in college, walks in, grabs him, walks upstairs. Staci is furious and goes upstairs to find him. He’s sitting on his bed. Waiting. Turns out Summer just needed his bathroom because she got her period. He had been sitting there waiting for Staci to come get mad at him.
They get together. Basically. Without labeling it.
Aaron Gets Worse
Aaron sees hickeys on Stacy’s neck and loses his mind that she’s with Nate. Then he shows up at the club with a broken arm and tells Stacy to ask her boyfriend. Nate says he never touched him. Aaron claims the hockey team had been pranking him, that someone saw Nate do it, but he won’t name the witness.
The coach says everyone is off the team until someone admits to it. But who says it was actually a hockey player? Could have just been Aaron being an asshole. Which it probably was. Nate takes the blame anyway. It wasn’t him but he admits to it to save the team.
The consequence from the Dean: if Aaron can’t skate, neither can Nate. Nate does his time. Gets back. Then Aaron drops Stacy mid-routine during a qualifying skate. They still qualify, barely, because they finish it anyway. But then Aaron’s wrist fails again, and since Aaron can’t skate, Nate is back to not playing. After one game.
Stacy is a mess, drinking at a bar when Nate finds her. He says: I can’t play hockey. I’ll be your skating partner. She says that’s a bad idea. He convinces her anyway.
The Food Plan
This is where it gets really ugly. Nate sees Stacy’s food plan while they’re training together. Zero carbs, almost no protein. She’s bruising easier, she’s anxious, she’s massively undereating. He’s studying sports medicine and knows exactly what he’s looking at. He’s freaking out.
Aaron designed the food plan and had told her he struggles to lift her when she’s eating off plan. But Nate has seen Aaron in the gym. Aaron can lift twice what Stacy weighs. Ryan, back when they were together, had also noticed Aaron was weirdly controlling about what she ate.
Stacy still believes Aaron wasn’t intentionally having her undereat. I don’t think anybody else in the world believes that, but she does.
When Staci brings it up with Aaron directly, he gets defensive and mean. Calls her a slut. Says she’ll stop fitting in her clothes if she eats normally. This is the point where she essentially moves in with Nate. She’s uncomfortable around Aaron and has been for a while.
Aaron shows up at practice begging her to move back. He’s mad about the skating arrangement with Nate, mad she left without a word, calls her a liar and naive. She calls him out on the food plan. He says, you’re a big girl, you could have started eating more at any time. Then pivots to: I miss you, come home, Nate’s lying to you. She doesn’t believe him. But she doesn’t fully see it either.
They’re officially together now, sleeping in the same bed. After about four of the eight weeks of suspension, they sleep together. Basically dating, just not calling it that.
The Party Fight
At a party Staci is falling asleep on Nate’s lap when something starts going down inside. Nate tells her to stay there. Of course she doesn’t. She runs in to find a fight in full swing and Nate with Aaron pushed against the wall by the throat. Both of them bloodied. Turns out Nate was actually breaking up a fight that Henry started. Henry says: if you heard what Aaron says about you behind your back, you wouldn’t be even a little bit upset.
Lola’s take: sometimes it’s better not to know what people say.
The next morning, Stacy says she’s ready to hear it. Henry tells her: Aaron has been calling her a jersey chaser, a slut, saying she’s going to trap Nate with a baby because she isn’t good enough to go pro, and that no one will ever love her because her own parents didn’t, and the ones who adopted her are just using her to fill their trophy cabinet. That last one is what sent Henry over the edge.
The Lake
Holidays. Stacy goes to her family’s house, sets the healthy boundaries her therapist has been talking about, tells her mom what Aaron said. Her mom tells her it’s pure garbage. Good mom.
They go to Nate’s family home for some time alone. She goes out to skate on the lake, spots a deer, decides to skate toward it. Nate calls her to tell her it’s not safe, scares the deer off, and she crashes right through the ice. He runs out, pulls her out, brings her body temperature back up, rushes her to the hospital.
She lost her phone in the lake. Lola catches her up on everything she missed. Staci, deciding Aaron is ready to make things right, agrees to go back to skating with him since he’s been cleared. Nate thinks she’s going back to Aaron entirely and is upset.
The Counselor Play
She goes to a meeting with Aaron and their coach. Aaron tells her his dad had another affair, his mom kicked his dad out, he felt so alone, and Stacy had been a terrible friend. He suggests counseling. His mom will pay for them to go together to work things out. She reluctantly agrees.
The counselor Aaron picked tells Staci to move back in with him. Exactly what Aaron wants. Even as the counselor is actually calling Aaron out on weaponizing his emotions, Aaron is also watching every single thing Staci eats since she’s moved back. Nate wants her to raise this in sessions. She still doesn’t.
She decides she doesn’t want to live with Aaron next year. Lola agrees.
At the next practice, Aaron grunts and groans every time he lifts her. Claims it’s her problem.
Finals
Finals day. Nate wins his game. As he’s heading out, the captain of the opposing team stops him and says: Aaron was with us playing football that night. He didn’t slip, he didn’t fall. We didn’t do anything to him. The guy is shocked. Nate finally has confirmation that Aaron lied about the whole thing. He can’t figure out why, but he knows.
Nate rushes to watch Stacy’s skate. They are almost done, beautiful on the ice, wrapped around each other, and then Aaron takes her face in his hands and kisses her. On camera. At finals.
Stacy tells the coach she is done being his partner. Aaron scoffs: she’ll never be Olympic ready in 2 years with someone new, she’s going to make her debut at 27. She lets him go. Tells the coach she’s going solo — if they make it through, she withdraws from the pair.
Nate has already punched Aaron in the face before Staci has even had a chance to react.
They find out the scores. They did amazingly.
Her parents had been calling. Her dad gets Nate on the line. Nate breaks it to him that Staci probably won’t want to be partners with Aaron anymore. Her dad says: I’m not surprised. We saw the ice pack on Aaron’s face in the camera feed.
She gets home and the hockey guys are there moving everything out. Lola has decided. They’re not living with Aaron anymore. They’ll move in with the boys until she and Lola find their own place.
Stacy goes to whoever had suspended Nate and tells the whole story. Investigation happens. Aaron is no longer at the school. Nate’s record is cleared.
Two-plus years later, Stacy is pregnant.
Best Part of This Book
The whole hockey team dressed as minions for Halloween. It is such a good group costume and I loved every second of it. And Staci showing up dressed as JJ, one of Nate’s teammates, purely to mess with him. She loves winding him up and I love that for her.
Also, Henry snapping. Finding out exactly what Aaron had been saying and why. The relief of the whole truth finally being out was massive.
Worst Part of This Book
Aaron. All of Aaron. Specifically the food plan. The fact that he had been deliberately keeping her underfed, telling her he couldn’t lift her when she was eating off plan, when Nate can clearly see that Aaron can lift twice what she weighs. And Stacy still, after everything, not being entirely sure it was intentional. It made me want to scream. The slow burn of watching everyone around her see it before she did was the hardest part of this book to sit with.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — Warm
There’s heat. The tension between Nate and Staci takes a while to get going and when it does it stays on the warmer side rather than going full flame. The buildup is the best part of it.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Satisfied. Aaron being removed from the school. Nate’s record cleared. The ending has a lot of threads to tie up and it does it well. And the two-plus years later note that she’s pregnant? That’s a sweet landing.
Would I Relisten?
No. Once was the right amount. But I don’t regret it.
Who Is This For?
Fans of enemies-to-lovers college romance who want a villain that feels genuinely recognizable. Aaron is not a cartoon bad guy. He’s the kind of person you might actually know, which is what makes him so infuriating to read. This gives Off Campus vibes, and if you liked Heated Rivalry or any hockey romance with some real emotional stakes, this is worth your time.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible CA | Audible US | Libro.fm
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📱 Ebook
Kindle US | Amazon CA | Bookshop.org
📚 More from the Maple Hills Series
- Book 1 — Icebreaker | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 3.9/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — You’re here!
- Book 2 — Wildfire | Reviewed by LD | Coming Soon
- Book 3 — Daydream | Reviewed by LD | Coming Soon
- Full Series Review — Is the Maple Hills Series Worth Reading? — Coming Soon
Ready for more from LD? Find them here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Series: Maple Hills Book 1 | Genre: Contemporary Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥