A review by emmalita
Hard Knocks by Ruby Lang

4.0

After enjoying Acute Reactions so much, I quickly moved on to Hard Knocks. I enjoyed Hard Knocks so much I am now 1/3 of the way through Clean Breaks. I forced myself to stop reading and write this review.

There is a lot I like about Ruby Lang. She turns a mean phrase. Her romances are both realistic and romantic. She doesn’t invent bizarre stratagems to keep her MCs apart, she uses completely relatable fears and insecurities to keep them apart and then brings them back together without (so far) grand gestures. Problems are not solved at the end of the book, but they are made manageable.

In this entry to the Practice Perfect series, Helen is a neurologist and Adam is a hockey player. For reasons, they end up on opposite sides of a debate about a hockey arena and the long term affects of head injuries. This is a slow burn romance. They spend much of the book apart, but they have great chemistry and banter.

He ignored her. “To sum up, I’m a sophisticated gentleman with urbane and practical tastes and you’re a Pop-Tart.”

Helen sat back and marveled. “You know, the problem with you is that you’re smarter than I’d like you to be.”

“I think that might be your problem, not mine.”



This isn’t truly an enemies to lovers story. They aren’t ever truly enemies. The roadblocks are their fears about what they might lose in the future and what they don’t have control over. They get together and separate a couple of times, and I wish Lang had lingered on them a little more as a couple.

As a person who has been accused of being complicated many times, I appreciate that Lang’s characters are complicated. They are amazing and a mess all at once.