Empty Net

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I'm noticing a trend with the books in this series and it's not a good one. All the male leads fall hard and fast when they meet their match. I suppose I could understand that happening. But for it to happen with a group of friends (or teammates as in this case)... so not likely. All the guys are hotter than should be allowed for one hockey team. And then the female leads.... holy crap do they have issues.

But let's focus on this story. Audrey has had major bad luck in the romance department. She's picked a bunch of losers, and her latest ex, Levi, is just horrid. And yet, she just can't seem to shake him. She goes back to him, leaves, and waffles for a good chunk of the story before she FINALLY has that lightbulb go off in her head that this dude is totally no good for her.

And then we have Tate, the rookie goalie for the Assassins... who happens to be about 8 years younger than Audrey. He has some issues (family dying in a car accident) that he's trying to work through. But his biggest problem is trying to make Audrey fall in love with him since he fell hard and fast.

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the story. But, I did have some major issues with it. First, the editing was horrible. I don't know how many times I had to stop and re-read because a scene ended and a new one started without any sort of break (I mean, there was a new paragraph, but no other sort of line break or indication of a change in time or location). There were also lots of errors (ones that jumped out were “easy back oven” and “quit an ass”.... oh and that doesn't even touch the fact that a secondary character's name changed halfway through the book (Coach Bacter was all the sudden Baxter).

But I just got very frustrated with the story. I think Ms Aleo could have played up Tate's issues a little more and backed off a little on Audrey. She was all over the place throughout the story while it almost seemed like Tate's issues were secondary.

Good parts of the story... past characters had some pretty big roles in this story. The hockey parts were great. Oh, and my emotions were engaged. In fact, I had to have a box of tissue next to me for the last part of the book as I couldn't stop crying.

I think Ms Aleo is a great story teller and look forward to reading future books in the series. I just hope that she mixes it up a little as I'm feeling like she's told the same story three times now with just some minor changes.