⤷ Author: Alexandra Moody
⤷ Series or Standalone: series
⤷ Published: March 26th, 2024
⤷ Genre: YA, fiction, sports romance
Rating: ✨3 stars✨
Review Updated: 07/09/2025
“There’s only one girl I care about, and she’s standing right in front of me.”
⤷ Synopsis:
Violet has only one rule: never date a jock. The one time she broke it, she ended up heartbroken, the focus of school gossip, and stuck with an ex who just won’t get the message that she’s done. What she needs is to show her ex that she’s completely moved on, and what better way then to impulsively kiss his biggest rival and captain of the enemy hockey team? Reed Darling, one of the Darling Devils, who always has wild rumors around him and an infamous reputation on and off the ice…perfect for a fake boyfriend?
Yes, this book really is your typical YA romance.
⤷ Characters:
That didn’t stop me from loving the characters though. And by characters, I really just mean Reed. He is an absolute sweetheart and it was so so cute to see how much he cared about Violet and did so much for her.
I liked Violet. I did. But she could also be so annoying at times and make me want to bang my head against a wall (or maybe against a hardcover version of this book?). I still don’t get what she ever saw in Jeremy Hoffman (her ex). His name alone is a red flag. Also the way she just instantly believes her lying, cheating ex about the “real reason” Reed wants to date her really pissed me off. After everything her ex did, she still fell for his lies.
The other characters were so much better. I honestly didn’t like how Mia was completely against Reed in the beginning, but she got so much better and was always pretty supportive of Violet. And I can’t wait to see how Grayson and Paige’s grumpy x sunshine romance plays out!
⤷ Plot:
The storyline was super fun and I read through this book pretty quickly. There were plenty of cute little scenes between Reed and Violet that had me smiling.
I thought that Reed’s knowledge of figure skating was cool and it was pretty cute to see him teaching a figure skating class to young kids. But then he went and started doing a figure skating routine in the middle of a hockey game and I think I might have died from second hand embarrassment 💀 It was so. so. bad. Even aside from that, I find it incredibly unrealistic that he was able to do it all in hockey skates. There’s a reason hockey skates and figure skates are made differently, and I really don’t think it’s possible to do the figure skating jumps he did without a toe pick and with the rounded, more curved hockey blades. But on the other hand, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he had stopped in the middle of a hockey game to not only take off his gear but then change skates to do a figure skating routine?
⤷ Final Thoughts:
⛸️⛸️⛸️ / 5
Rival Darling was cute and I absolutely loved Reed and some of the side characters, but we did not need him to do a figure skating routine in the middle of a hockey game.
