August 24, 2015
Any romance reader who can enjoy repeated utterances of “Sweet cheese-its” and “Oh, for the love of cheese” is going to love Jamieson’s first Aces Hockey contemporary and its Wisconsin Cheesehead heroine. When Lovey Armstrong moves to Chicago and rooms with Duncan, her hockey-star big brother, it soon becomes clear that he still sees her as a kid in need of his protection. Dunc threatens severe bodily harm to any of his Chicago Aces teammates who so much as dance with Lovey. That includes his other roommate, Marc Dupuis. As formula requires, Marc and Lovey predictably hit it off, Duncan disapproves, and foul-mouthed hockey players are jarringly juxtaposed with the euphemism-wielding Lovey. This hockey romance doesn’t quite deserve the penalty box, but the clichéd plot and the cast of one-note characters may only be palatable to diehard genre fans.