Robin Kaye

I am a hockey romance addict, so when I saw this anthology I had to have it. I have read a lot of anthologies, what I liked the most about this one is that it had a common theme. Each novella was about a different NHL player on the recent Stanley Cup Championship team the New Orleans Cajun Rage. The stories were about the individual player’s day with the Cup and a legend about them finding their true love on their day. I love how all the books were clearly coordinated. Players were show more mentioned in each other’s books, and Edwin Motz, the Keeper of the Cup, made an appearance in the stories. Even though each tale had a common theme, every story was amazingly different, enjoyable, and exciting. I like that some of the authors tied their books to existing series. I love that 20% of the royalties earned goes to the Homes For Our Troops charity, a nonprofit organization that builds mortgage-free, specially modified homes for severely injured veterans.

HOT ON ICE consists of eighteen stories:

DEEP CHECK (Station Seventeen #1.5) by Kimberly Kincaid. After a fight, hockey Center, Finnegan Donnelly couldn’t leave his hometown of Remington and his two best friends behind fast enough. Seven years later, he finds himself taking the Cup home to visit his ex-best friend Asher’s grave. While there he is reunited with January Sinclair, the other person, he left behind. DEEP CHECK is a sweet second chance hockey/firefighter romance.

BEAR NAKED by Katie Kenyhercz. After nine years, NHL Defensman, Bear Thompson, returns home to Bear Mountain Reserve in Canada. He wants to get permission to allow a television crew and outsiders onto the reserve for his day with the Cup in hopes of giving his people some good publicity. However, he needs to convince the Chief/his ex-girlfriend, Aria Paul, that it is in the Mi’Kmaq’s best interest. BEAR NAKED is a charming second chance romance. I loved the cultural aspects of this story.

BODY CHECK by Desiree Holt. NHL Defenseman, Matt Vorchak, is coping with a career-ending injury. He returns home to San Antonio for his day with the Cup, to do some apologizing, and soul searching. He seeks out Lizzie St. John, the girl he walked away from. BODY CHECK is a thought-provoking second chance romance.

BREAKAWAY BROOKE by Angi Morgan. Left winger, Deacon “Tripp” Sanders heads to McKinney, TX for his day with the Cup. Coming from a prestigious family, his life has been threatened. Unbeknownst to him, his family hires bodyguard, Brooke Henderson, to keep an eye on him. BREAKAWAY BROOKE has a bit of a supernatural feel. It is full of action and twists.

UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN by Kim Golden. NHL Center, Jonas Magnusson, is recovering from a concussion. He goes home to Stockholm for his day with the Cup; while there he is reunited Mariam Kidane.

IN SKATES TROUBLE (Chicago Rebels, #0.5) by Kate Meader. NHL right winger star, Ford Callaghan, takes the Cup home to Chicago; while there he meets the woman of his dreams, Addison Williams. Unfortunately, she is also the ex-wife of his team’s owner. I adored this story. I will definitely be following the new Chicago Rebels series.

CHECKING YES by Misty D. Waters. Left winger, Cooper Banks, left Dove Harbor, Georgia, after discovering a secret, leaving behind Savannah Jane Scott, the love of his life. Three years later, he returns home for his day with the Cup. CHECKING YES is a delightful second chance romance with many exciting twists.

PENALTY BOX BLUES (a Wild Thing novella) by Robin Kaye. Defenseman, Stryker Gyllenhal, pays off a debt to a friend by taking the Cup back home to Boise, Idaho; while there he is assigned a handler, his ex-tutor and childhood friend, Trish Reynolds. However, he doesn’t recognize her now that she is no longer hiding behind frumpy clothes. PENALTY BOX BLUES is a heartfelt read with a lot of insight and thought-provoking content. This was an adorable story that made me want to check out the Wild Thing Series.

FREE AGENT by Robin Covington. Jamie “DC” Washington has had an eventful year; he just won the Stanley Cup; he is a free agent, and he announced at a press conference that he was gay. While heading to Washington DC, for his day with the Cup, he bumps into his PT Etienne, whom he has been lusting after.

BLADE (B-Squad #2.5) by Avery Flynn. Goaltender, Flynn Kazakov spends his day with the Cup in Snow Bay, The Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Thief, Gillie Pike, tries to warn him that someone is attempting to frame him. BLADE is full of action and twists.

MAKING HIS MOVE by Susan Scott Shelley. Backup Goalie, Rod Fraser heads to New York. He bumps into his sister Kelsey’s best friend, Arielle Charton, who he has had a crush on. He tries to convince her to go on a date with him.

CHECK MY HEART by Christi Barth. Center, Kurt Lundquist, dying little brother Jasper, request that he win the Cup. Ten months later, he won the Cup but Jasper wasn’t around to see it. Kurt runs into Jasper’ nurse Lissette, whom his is attracted to but feels is off limits.

BLOCKED by Heather Long. Bad-boy right winger, Archer Durham needs to clean up his reputation. He becomes involved with pop star Hoshi Sato.

FULL CONTACT by Andie J. Christopher. Left winger, Anders Sorenson goes to Thunderbay Cove in Northern Minnesota. His teammates put a $150,000 bounty on his virginity.

COURAGE by Lena Hart. Coach Mason “The Rage” Courage fights to keep his marriage.

RANSOM by Nana Malone. Right Wing, Ransom Cox is stranded in a cabin in Hope, NY, with his high school crush, Lexa Carlisle. RANSOM is a fun romance.

CAGED by Virginia Nelson. Right Winger, Oliver “Ollie” Tremblay felt obligated to spend his day with the Cup in his hometown. Having bad memories, he left the town as soon as he could. He is reunited with his childhood crush, Maisie Miller. I like how the story flashed back and forth between the past and present.

THE WARM UP by Xio Axelrod. Defenseman, Constantine Zimin just won the Cup, but it is bittersweet because he has no one to celebrate it with. His twin sister died ten years ago; his parents couldn’t make it, and his best friend / teammate Jonas was in the hospital with a concussion. He heads home to Philly where he meets nurse, Sujarta Meriwether.

HOT ON ICE is an amazing read. Fourteen of the authors were new to me. The authors I was familiar with were: Katie Kenyhercz, Susan Scott Shelley, Desiree Holt, and Heather Long. I highly recommend this anthology to anyone that enjoys sports romances. I voluntarily reviewed an advance reader copy of this book. show less

If for no other reason, this book earned its low rating for the endless ‘Barbie doll’ insults the bitchy heroine threw at other women on practically EVERY SINGLE PAGE.

The book featured my most hated romance theme:
• Only plain women who don’t give a damn about their appearance are worthwhile human beings.
• Even though the moral of the story is supposed to be ‘it’s what’s on the inside that counts’, it turns out it’s the heroine’s personality – not her appearance – show more that needs work.
• The heroine’s unconventional appearance gives her permission to be a complete bitch to any other women who happen to stroll through her life.
• Despite the woman being Ms Average in looks and Ms Way Below Average in personality, the hero is Rich, Gorgeous, Successful, Caring (to the point of being a stalker) and never, ever lusts after women who are in any way equal to him.

Romeo, Romeo had a very definite chick lit feel to it, and I’m certainly not a chick lit fan. The genre almost always features a self-absorbed woman who is so insecure about her appearance she spends the whole book thinking nasty thoughts about all the other women she encounters. But then! The sexiest, most unrealistically romantic man in the world turns up on the scene, renounces the nicer, more appealing women who throw themselves at him, and sweeps the undeserving heroine off her feet because all her irritating personality traits are exactly what he’s looking for in a wife.

I suppose I can see why others loved this so much. The not so remarkable woman gets the younger, better-looking version of Donald Trump. Even though she’s not small, the hero carries her everywhere – a fantasy of hers and one she never thought she’d find a man to give her. A few days after they’ve met she becomes sick with pneumonia and the hero immediately moves in with her and cooks gourmet meals and cleans and shops and walks her dog and thinks she’s beautiful and perfect even when she’s coughing and spluttering and dirty and practically dead.
For her part, Rosalie gave nothing to her Prince Charming. Nothing. The best she could do was be extremely ungrateful for his presence. But apparently that just added to her perfection. Ugh.
It’s quite the over the top fantasy. I found it nauseating.

But even if you love those, “I’m a better person because I’m a REAL WOMAN” stories, there’re plenty of other reasons I did not like this book.

Now, I read this over a weekend where I wasn’t feeling so good, and didn’t want to concentrate on anything more serious. It was free, and I figured seeing as how the Rosalie was sick in the book, maybe I’d find a kindred spirit. I was willing to go with the extreme Cinderellaish quality of the story. I wanted to be entertained with an implausible relationship and a ridiculously unrealistic hero. My problem was that I came to despise Rosalie from – oh – about page two, and so for me the story imploded from there. Didn’t help one bit that the Prince Charming turned out to be something of a dud. There’s nothing worse than being furious at the book that you’re trying to cheer yourself up with when you’re sick!

To top it all off, we had one of my pet peeves front and centre: the hero who lies about his identity for most of the book. Now I love twists and turns in a story – I even love it when the main pair don’t trust each other (adds lots of nice angst!) – but the deliberate deception is not heroic behaviour, and put a major dent in the man’s ‘too good to be true’ persona. I honestly would have preferred him to just be too good to be true than come with a side order of lying moron.

But then he kind of redeemed himself by being PERFECT in every other way.

After Nick spends a week shopping, cleaning, cooking and caretaking when Rosalie is sick, she takes off on a business trip and Nick stays behind to babysit her dog. He’s annoyed she hasn’t called after arriving at her destination (really, when a guy has gone to that much effort for you, one phone call surely isn’t out of the question), and when she does call it’s to speak to the dog over the answering machine. Then she says something to Nick along the lines of, “Why would you think I was calling for you?” (Now, this was probably supposed to be amusing, but it was the way the woman approached the entire relationship. Nick was a servant she had sex with, and she got to tell him on a daily basis how unimportant he was to her.)
There’s not a single reason in the world why Nick would have wanted to be with Rosalie. She had no redeeming features, and I could not for a second buy Nick’s near-obsession with her.

As with most chick lit I’ve read, this one comes with extended families full of meddling ‘ethnics’. I’m from a family of ‘ethnics’ myself, but I find more humour in a ‘less is more’ approach than the incredible, manic overkill with which the woman’s Italian family were written.

Not only does this relationship evolve almost to the point of marriage without Rosalie even knowing Nick’s full name, but it also evolves with Nick knowing he is Rosalie’s silent enemy when it comes to her job. The success or failure of her career is in his hands, and he’s not on her side. Yet somehow Nick thinks if he just doesn’t tell her, things will work out fine. Then when she gets upset, instead of waiting around to find out what’s going on, he dumps her, packs up his stuff and moves out.
I simply cannot comprehend how a woman could be so stupid that she could live with a man for three months and not once even ask his last name! For all the time she devoted to insulting the intelligence of any woman more attractive than her, Rosalie was by far the least intelligent person I’ve read about in a long time. It was supremely difficult to feel sorry for her when she really did bring it all on herself. Nick was an idiot too.

Note to authors: just because you have blonde hair doesn’t mean you have fake breasts, just as not all brunettes are naturally well-endowed because they have dark hair!! An entire marching band of beautiful blondes trotted across the page in an indulgent display of female wish fulfilment to prove that the oh-so-special heroine with the messy apartment, ugly car and insecurities about her weight was oh-so much better in the hero’s eyes. I lost count of how many times a ‘thin blonde woman with fake boobs’ walked onto the scene. Even the doctor at the hospital was described that way.
I can’t stand women who have to insult everyone else just to feel good about themselves, and that was the heroine in a nutshell. She was there calling other women bitches, but the only woman in the story the insult could have been directed at was Rosalie. I wanted her to get over herself! She defined people based on their looks far more than every other character in the story put together.

There was a suspense angle that was introduced right at the end, and it was so out of place in this story I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

Maybe it’s a chick lit thing, but the amount of page time given to Rosalie’s pet dog was really boring. I don’t mind having the dog in the book, but not only did it have a human name – Dave – but it received as much page time as the main pair!

Then, if the dog wasn’t enough, Rosalie’s neighbours were a pair of painfully stereotypical gay men.

On a side note, I CANNOT believe people in the States (including the heroine of this book) love that pointy-faced Australian chef ‘Curtis’. His awful supermarket ads in Australia drive me insane. What are you guys thinking?! You’ve got much better men in your own backyard!

Romeo, Romeo reminded me very strongly of one of those romantic comedy movies I run away from; annoying characters, too good to be true situations, and a whole lot of stereotypical ‘pretty bitches’ passing through just to show how wonderful the ‘non-pretty’ heroine is. The plot went from strange to implausible, and nothing anybody did came across as remotely realistic. There’s a reason I never watch those things, and it’s the same reason I did not enjoy this book. show less

Rosalie has just escaped from the family dinner where her Italian mama has been haranguing her to get married and have babies when she has a flat tire. She also has no spare. Furiously cursing her luck and her brother (who was supposed to have gotten her a spare), she is kicking the car when a wrecker pulls over to help her. Nick is gorgeous and charming and despite herself, Rosalie finds her hormones at attention. They spar all the way to her house and somehow end up with a date scheduled. show more What Nick doesn't tell Rosalie though, is that he is really Dominick Romeo, wealthy car dealer, not just Nick the mechanic.

And after their first date, it seems impossible to tell her who he really is. Not only is it refreshing to him to be wanted for himself rather than his money, but as a kid he was friends with Rosalie's older brother and the two of them were arrested together. The good news is that both Rosalie and Nick are completely against marriage, for different reasons, and they agree to keep their relationship monogamous but not serious. When it is no longer fun for one or the other, they will walk away with no hurt feelings. Of course, neither of them realize that real true love is creeping up on them. And it is complicated by Nick's subterfuge about who he is (although Rosalie knows) as well as by the fact that he is the person who had been dropping rumors about the uncertain financial position of the dealership Roaslie has just been retained to turn around and make successful again (Rosalie doesn't know this bombshell).

This contemporary romance has some pretty steamy sex scenes in it. It also has some pretty entertaining scenes in the bosom of Roaslie's nutjob family. The secondary characters really help to move the plot along and inject some levity into the story. Rosalie's reason for not wanting love and marriage is understandable but Nick's is rather sillier, highlighting a blind spot in his character that wasn't necessary. Watching Nick be stymied by a woman who is everything he purports to want (independent, casual, natural, and uninterested in anything more emotionally binding than sex) is pretty entertaining. Their chemistry is believable and with the exception of one stereotypical and unneccessary plot twist at the end, the storyline cooks along of its own accord. This is a fun romp of a romance and fans of contemporaries will thoroughly enjoy it. show less

Loved it! This is my first Robin Kaye book (yes, this is part of series and I haven't read the first two) and can't wait to pick up another! This story was cute, funny and incredibly sexy!
Both Rich and Becca have issues. It's what make them who they are. Rich is an alpha male and Italian to boot. Becca is extremely wealthy and doesn't trust the male species not to just be after her money. So, when they find out that they both have to occupy the same apartment for a while, they have to come show more to some sort of truce.

Since Rich's girlfriend recently broke up with him, he solicits Becca to teach him to be more relationship material. He needs to learn to cook, clean and do laundry if he wants to settle down and convince his ex to come back to him. At first, Becca is more than happy to oblige just to get Rich out of her hair sooner. But, as she sees Rich trying so hard she begins to want him for herself. As for Rich, the more he tries to become a man ready to settle down, he figures out that it's not his ex that he's really after.

I literally laughed out loud multiple times while reading this book. Rich is hilarious in his determination to become what he calls a Domestic God. It's no wonder Becca eventually falls for him! She tried hard to continue to dislike him, but as he tries harder and harder to be a good man, Becca sees a different side of him. At the same time, Rich is seeing a different side of Becca that she keeps hidden from the rest of the world. It's obvious from the beginning that these two are going to hook up, but that didn't keep me from turning the pages as fast as I could. I wish I'd have had the time to read this in one sitting, but it only took me two days. I had it open in my hands at every available opportunity.

Kaye's ability to create characters is awesome. She made me want to know them! Rich's Aunt Rose was just a sideline, but she was interesting and funny. Vinny, another side character was also well developed and made me want to meet him. I really think that's why it was so easy to love the book and feel all the emotion just as though I was a part of it. show less