A review by beckymmoe
Easy by Brenda Rothert

4.0

Reviewed on my blog, Becky on Books, on 5/28/2020.

Second chance romance FTW!

There isn't a ton of hockey in book six of the Chicago Blaze series--it takes place over the summer--though Easy does help coach a youth hockey team. Instead the focus here is definitely on the "romance" part of this hockey romance, which is as it should be, because Erik and Allie have ten years of hurt feelings to work out and a whole lot of current day issues to deal with in order to get to their HEA.

But oh--do they get to their HEA... :)

This is actually the second second chance romance I've read this week, and it worked for a similar reason--a big reason that the hero and heroine didn't make it the first time around was due to being too young and not at the right place in their lives yet. This time, of course, there's a few extra wrinkles--Allie gets custody of her sister's three children before she even finishes high school, while Erik's at college and en route to an NHL career--and even though our hero does spend ten years blaming her for their breakup, once they reconnect and he looks at what they've both done in that time, he's gained the maturity to see that yeah, Allie actually made the right choice at the time.

Grown ups acting like grown ups! Imagine ;)

This time around their relationship conflict is one of can we make this work?, since she still has three kids to consider and he's a professional athlete--his life is in Chicago and hers is in Wisconsin. I liked the solution they came up with here--it was 100% believable and didn't drag things out longer than they needed to be. The main drama of the story once they managed to reconnect came from elsewhere, and yikes, was it intense. Everything ended up exactly where it should have, though (I wasn't crying in that last chapter--you were!) and OMG when is Jonas's story going to be out? ;)

Rating: 4 stars / A-

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.