guys.......🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭 this was actually not okay I loved this. okay okay okay so many many thoughts. bad stuff first. this is very clearly the authors first book, while I loved the messages in this book, they were not subtle at all and at first I was like oh maybe this is just geared towards a younger audience and then the characters started fucking non-stop like 20% of the way into this book so I was like okay this book is for adults. speaking of i did not realise how much smut there would be in this book, I assumed it would be a cute romance with like a few scenes at the end at least based on the cute cover but oh my🤭🤭 this had me blushing and I have been revitalised from my smut trauma from chloe brown.
also there were just way too many characters in this to follow on omg. i really liked the device of them having to do speed dating icebreaker (get it????) games at the start so that Anastasia (and in turn the audience) could get to know the hockey team. but despite this, most of the side characters that weren't aaron, lola or henry were low-key the same person in my head the whole time. also this is not the books fault but the main character is called Anastasia but people call her stassie but when I listened to the audiobook it sounded like stasi and I had to read a book in high school called stasiland which I literally hated and sometimes hearing her nickname made me think of that book, bummer.
okay onto things that I loved. this felt so real to me!!! this was a very unconventional romance book in terms of plot structure, a lot of people take issue with this but I really liked that they got together quite early on and did the whole fwb thing that turned into something more and that the characters (let's not kid ourselves Anastasia) were/was so good and communicating!!! nothing going under the radar everything is laid out on the table which I love. i thought I saw where this book was going a few times and I was surprised each time, there were lots of moments where a lot of authors would have copped out and did a cheap 3rd act break up or not give Aaron any nuance or add a stupid miscommunication bit and have a dumb fight or make Ryan a dick and I'm so glad that the author did not do this!!

(I feel like they broke Ryan and Olivia up so that he can have his own stand alone cause these books are going to be a series, I NEED a Ryan spin off) 

  also the smut🤤🤤 slay. 
this book really exceeded my expectations cause I was just looking for a fun romance and I got so much more, I can see the markings of a new favourite romance author coming my way, she just needs a bit more refinement, I'm so excited to read what hannah grace does next! also i read this book with a friend (more like she finished it in one or two days and then I updated her on my progress) which definitely enhanced the experience, I'm definitely going to start doing this more often because being able to scream about this book in real time with someone who is going through the exact same thing was literally magical. also in this book Anastasia reads the kiss quotient (which she doesn't mention by name but omg I recognised it from a mile away and I love that added detail cause I literally also love that book 😭😭 SLAY SLAY SLAY