It’s a Love/Skate Relationship (Review)

Information:

• Author: Carli J. Corson
• Genre: Romance
• Page Count: 309
• Year Published: 2025

Read This if You Like:

• Hockey
• Figure skating
• Sapphic romance
• Vermont
• Bitter school rivalries
• Enemies to Lovers
• Taylor Swift Propaganda
• Novels where everything works out when it needs to
• NYC scenes

Synopsis:

Nothing motivates Charlie Porter more than hockey- especially the bitter rivalry between her private school, Cranford, and the public high school, Winthrop. And that all explodes into her starting a brawl after a game. And naturally, Charlie is frustrated when in the aftermath, she’s suspended from Cranford for six months, banned from playing on the hockey team, and forced to go to the school that got her into this whole mess to begin with. But things shift when she meets Alexa, a figure skater left without her skating partner after he was injured in the fight, and now hates Charlie with a burning passion. But nevertheless, they make a deal- Charlie serves as Alexa’s temporary partner so she can win a major tournament, and in exchange, Alexa’s famous mother will get Charlie in front of college scouts that she’s missing out on due to her suspension. Soon, Charlie needs to put up with the challenges of difficult figure skating moves and Alexa’s hatred. But as Charlie and Alexa spend more time together, it turns out the two may be a great partnership- definitely on the ice, but maybe also in love.

Review:

Let’s quickly acknowledge the current moment. As you might know, there’s this TV show called Heated Rivalry that got widely popular a few months ago, which subsequently caused the book series that it’s based on to also get a huge boost in popularity. And all of this asserts the fact that readers simply love both their hockey romance and their gay romance. I haven’t watched/read Heated Rivalry despite the hype, but its current cultural relevancy might’ve been the slight inspiration for me to read It’s a Love/Skate Relationship, a book that was sitting untouched on my bookshelf for months. Yes, it’s a hockey and figure skater romance, and there’s more focus on figure skating, so it’s not an actual hockey romance. But I still firmly believe Heated Rivalry played a role in motivating me to read it. Anyway, I was anticipating this novel when it dropped early last year because it looked cute, and then I brought it and then read other books despite my anticipation, as I tend to do. And as you probably figured out by now, I finally read it.

My opinion? It’s… cute. Just a cute little romance that I liked a lot better than the impression the first few chapters gave me. But like any simple romance novel, there are flaws.

The dialogue in this novel felt like it really leaned into its teenage characters. Before this first point, let me be clear that I don’t hate Swifties. Taylor Swift is not my kind of music, but I can definitely see and accept the appeal of her songs and cultural influence. That said, when Alexa straight up calls Taylor Swift the “most talented singer songwriter of our generation”, now that is just adding to the Taylor Swift overpromotion for no reason. In terms of the other dialogue, it just felt like typical teenage talk. There’s some lines that will possibly cause people to cringe, but I personally found it natural- it felt really close to a good old teenage friend group. And of course, there are adorable little moments of fluffy romantic banter (plus some good jabs to bring the enemies-to-lovers trope to life). There’s also a bunch of nice slice-of-life scenes that really show the development of Charlie and Alexa’s relationship as they slowly fell in love. I just think they picked a unique variety of locations that really helped to show different parts of the character’s interests. There’s one very awkward moment that I’d cut, because it’s super juvenile, like it was made for elementary school kids to laugh, and it doesn’t fit the teenage audience this book is made for. But other than that, the dialogue and settings really help to develop the calm, romantic feeling for this novel.

As for the actual characters, they were… fine. The main one that stood out to me was Alexa, and that’s mainly because she was your standard enemies-to-lovers love interest who doesn’t give us the best first impression since we are introduced to her through her death-staring Charlie and then showing total disapproval. Maybe some readers like that, and I get that it’s kind of necessary for enemies-to-lovers, but… sheesh. Chill out. The book is entirely in Charlie’s perspective, and I thought she was pretty decent. It was clear she had some temper issues in the beginning, but that and her passion for skating/hockey made her character a lot more interesting, and she was pretty chill. However, I do wish the book was dual POV and we had Alexa’s perspective as well. This is partly because I think getting to know what’s going on in her mind would’ve helped me to like her more in the beginning. However, my desire for her POV is mainly because of the role Alexa’s mom, Geri, plays in the story. Even if she had her good moments, Geri is determined to make sure the girls are as strong as possible, and that means she gets a little controlling sometimes. (You can really tell Alexa got some of her personality from her mom.) And that aspect of her character wasn’t really discussed, as both girls just shrugged it off and most likely accepted that she just has high standards. But I’m certain Geri would’ve had a major impact on Alexa, since she would’ve grown up around Geri’s coaching for most of her life, and her controlling nature would probably enact some emotions in her, or at least impact how she trains. But even when talking to Charlie, there’s no mention of how Alexa feels about her mom’s coaching. Therefore, having Alexa’s POV would possibly force the author to think about how Alexa has been impacted by Geri, and this would improve the novel because I just found it weird that we had a character whose personality could have major effects on others, but then in the end it felt like Geri was just there just there to add an extra sense of foreboding to Charlie’s decision to try figure skating.

I think Geri’s personality not being fully addressed was the only notable issue I had with the novel, because every other problem is just from a bunch of random inconsistencies and small things that don’t make sense. The major example of this is their day trip to New York City, which actually was my favorite part of the book because there was good banter in it. But the whole issue was that this trip was a day trip from Vermont, and according to multiple sources, this is actually not feasible. They drive from Vermont to get a Metro North in Connecticut, and assuming they get the train in New Haven, the drive, according to Google Maps, can range from three to five hours long. Granted, Charlie does say she gets up early that day, but… that is still a long drive for a day trip, and you still have a two-ish hour train ride ahead. That would mean you have 5 to 7 hours of travel in total. That’s… way too excessive for a day trip. And for some extra inaccuracy, THE AUTHOR DOESN’T HAVE THE METRO NORTH GO TO THE RIGHT STATION. ¹ Maybe this entire complaint is just a huge pile of unnecessary nitpicking on my part, but it’s staying in the review because it’s funny. My other minor issue was how unrealistic some other moments were. I originally thought the six month suspension Charlie received at the beginning was overkill, but the book does say she had a history of bad behavior, so I’ll just let that slide. However, the climax is inexcusable- I’m not giving it away, but there’s absolutely no way Charlie was able to so easily make such a major sudden decision, and there’s no way that it actually worked. Plus, it requires more unrealistically easy and quick travel! It’s plot armor at its finest. Well, it’s not really plot armor, but it is for sure unrealistic “everything works out” magic to fix things up. At least the romantic part of the ending is pretty cute.

Honestly, I think It’s a Love/Skate Relationship is one of the few romance novels where I thought it was definitely a simple romance and nothing more. Not just because of the fluff, but also because of the simple dialogue and characters, and how some parts just work out well despite them being things that wouldn’t work out in real life. And I’m not saying any of that is bad, but this is definitely not a book for those who want something deeper. Meanwhile, as a casual reader, I mostly see it as a cute sports romance story that wasn’t my absolute favorite. Now that I’ve read this, I suddenly want to watch The Cutting Edge (a 90s romcom about a hockey player and figure skater falling in love, which probably was the basis for this book’s plot.) Also, I think if you like teen sapphic romance, you’ll probably have fun with this. Just don’t finish it and have your main takeaway be that a day trip from Vermont to NYC is somewhat feasible. It most likely isn’t.

1. New York fun fact: The Metro North goes to Grand Central Station, while Penn Station hosts Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. As of a few years ago, LIRR goes to both stations. Now that you read my tidbit, here’s a quiz: Why was the author wrong when she had the girls take the Metro North to Penn Station?
   (This is all coming from an actual New Yorker.)
   
   Also credit to this one-star Goodreads review for giving me this point, I definitely had the feeling that something was off from a real-life standpoint when I was reading the NYC scene, but this review made it clear about why I was getting that feeling. It also has some points about other inaccuracies, mainly about the actual figure-skating, that I didn’t bring up here because they didn’t bother me as much or because of my limited sports knowledge. It does discuss pretty much the entire book, so major spoiler warning. ↩︎