Icebreaker

I was so hopeful that Icebreaker was going to be a book that I would thoroughly enjoy. The synopsis sounded perfect for me, as I'm a big lover of “enemies to lovers” and anything adjacent to it. I should've known that the book wasn't going to be great as it was a haphazard TikTok recommendation. I should really start curating my booktok experience, but it's easy to get lost in the hype.

What was promised in the synopsis, and the way it was written, was either not fulfilled at all or done so in a very shallow manner. It reads that because of her skating partner's (Aaron) injury and a prank gone extreme, Anastasia and Nathan have to not just share an ice skating rink, but also work together as partners as Anastasia is a partner skater. The prank gone extreme and its fall-out happens early in the book. Them sharing an ice skating rink is never really explored beyond a character talking about it. Aaron's injury and the two becoming ice skating partners doesn't happen until halfway through the book, and is also explored in a shallow manner. What happened before that you ask? A lot of fucking and Anastasia acting up.

I find that the personal issues the characters are going through, especially the two main characters and Aaron, are explored as shallowly as the plot points. One of the biggest issues that Anastasia is facing, her eating disorder, is facilitated by Aaron's nasty behavior (which Anastasia refuses to call out correctly because Aaron is her best friend). But, Aaron is barely in the book. His lack of presence in the book is counterbalanced with the over abundance of side characters that are irrelevant to the book. Why does Ryan, Anastasia's fuck-buddy, have to be here when he quintessentially does nothing for the plot? Robbie, Nathan's best friend, and Lola's (Anastasia's other best friend) feels shoe-horned in. Why is Russ so present when Henry can fill his role the vast majority of the time. Who the fuck is Bobby?

The romance feels very lackluster. I sense no chemistry between Anastasia and Nathan, and I feel that their romance feels...juvenile? It happens so fast and in such a manner that has me scratching my head. I realize that this is a book and that not everything has to be super realistic, but the time the characters spend together doesn't warrant their relationship. The forced-proximity that the synopsis hints at would've made their romance way more believable, but that doesn't happen. The first time they meet, Nathan eats her out, which is whatever for college students. But their interactions after are lacking the space for a romantic relationship to truly develop. Anastasia's commitment “issues” come from wanting to focus on her sport, but I feel like that reasoning is lost as the relationship between the two goes further and is really just used as a plot device to prevent the romance from developing from a break-neck speed to the speed of light.

I know the reason for why this book is so popular is because of the “spicy” smut. If you consider this book spicy, good for you, but to me the scenes were a huge snooze fest. For me, smut that is super spicy needs to be raunchy, explicit and actually make you a little excited. The smut in here is tame, especially in regards to the prose used to describe it. “His hands run over my body”...BORING. Where are his hands going? Is he fondling the titties? Digging his fingers into her ass? Grabbing her hips? No, just boringly running down her body with no extra information. The constant eating out and sucking dick is boring too. It lasts for mere seconds and the description focuses too much on rosy prose and feelings rather than the sex itself. There is nothing wrong with smut scenes that aren't too raunchy, but I guess I feel lied to lol.

The last 1/3rd of the book picks up and becomes interesting. I was overjoyed that I was finally invested in what happens next, compared to the first 2/3rd of the books where I was constantly thinking about DNFing the book and moving on. I hate that the synopsis doesn't really start happening towards the middle of the book and that it was executed in a completely different, and quite frankly, boring manner than it did.

Overall, the book was a big disappointment from my expectations. It's definitely not the worst book I've read, but I have too much to complain about to like it. I don't recommend this book to people that 1. enjoy books with a present plot and 2. people whose smut needs to be above the spicy level of vanilla (don't let Tiktok lie to you about the spicy level of this book, pls).