SuitabookCenter ice
Cate Cameron
- Reading
- Check in before reading about the stated mature content and Karen’s bereavement. While reading, discuss whether hockey and family expectations help or restrict the characters, and leave space for reactions to the relationship.
- Themes
- Belonging after loss: Karen moves after her mother’s death and finds it difficult to fit into her father’s new family. The situation is clearly central, but it is not established whether the book ultimately presents Karen’s adjustment as successful, difficult or unresolved.
- Pressure and identity: Tyler is a star hockey player, while pressure from his father and agent is described as taking him dangerously close to an unspecified edge. The book appears to examine the gap between Tyler’s public identity as a hockey player and what others fail to see in him, without establishing its judgement of those pressures.
- Romantic connection: Karen and Tyler find something in each other that they both desperately need, although Karen initially resists starting something with him. The book?s stance on this remains unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready for adult language, underage drinking and sexual situations. Karen’s mother has died, and she is living with an unfamiliar father and his new family; Tyler is described as nearing an unspecified edge under pressure.