Book Review: Blocked (Gold Hockey #1)

by Elise Faber

Rating: ⭐3.5/5⭐

This is her shot

Brit has the chance to make history by being the first female goalie to play for an NHL team, the San Francisco Gold. So, when she is introduced to Stefan, the Gold’s captain, she is determinedly not interested.

Stefan is sexy, charming, and has a publicly documented list of conquests a mile long. But Brit is unwilling to risk mixing business with pleasure, even when that business is wrapped up in a six-foot-plus, gorgeously muscled package. When management pushes Brit and Stefan together in an effort to gain good press for the beleaguered team, Brit finds that her carefully calculated disinterest doesn’t mask her body’s desires. The more she falls for Stefan, the more she risks her career.

Will she be able to have it all—a starting position and the heart of the captain? Or will she lose everything?

Review

I enjoyed Blocked. It was my first book by Elise Faber, and I think I’d be interested in reading more of her stuff. The writing was very easy to follow along with, and for a mid-length sports romance it was a super quick read! I appreciated how fleshed out both main characters and also the overall story-background were. Other characters that have their own books in the series were even introduced, and we got enough of a peek that I’m curious about their own stories.

I liked that both Brit and Stefan were both dealing with personal issues on top of their professional struggles. Her, the PTSD after being physically assaulted, him, his mom’s cancer plus his abandonment issues surrounding his dad. It made them feel like real people, with real problems, and provided context and reasons for how they both acted and reacted to stuff.

For some reason, going in I’d been under the impression that this would be a consensual fake relationship story, but it wasn’t. Actually, it was too one sided to comfortably fit into that trope category. In reality, I’d say this was more closely related to a “bet” type story than fake dating, since feelings were real all along for both main characters and only one party was privy to the fake-dating scheme while the other was in the dark.

Overall, it was a nice, not overly complicated, slightly cheesy book, with a lot of care, love and thought put into all the hockey-related parts. It was very easy to tell the author is passionate about the sport. Hockey was certainly a predominant theme in this book, and I think that’s how it should be with sports romances.