I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m relatively new to romance. Most women who’ve been reading it have been doing so since they were kids, but I only started a couple years ago. I’ve embraced it fully, but most of the canon is still new to me. So I’m reviewing another old book, because she was one of the first authors I read and she hooked me into the entire series and some of her others, too.

Rachel Gibson writes very strong alpha heroes, which isn’t my favorite type. However, she does it really well and I consistently enjoy her books even if I wouldn’t be able to stand the hero in real life (never mind that he wouldn’t have the time of day for me, either). I also would never have expected to enjoy sports romances, as I’m not into sports, either. However, Sarina Bowen taught me that a good hockey story is a little addictive.

So I came into Gibson’s first novel in a series centered around players on the fictitious Seattle Chinooks Hockey team a little unsure—would she be able to pull off the sporty, alpha in a way I could appreciate?

Yep. Despite some faults, I had trouble putting this book down.

In this secret baby/enemies-to-lovers tale, Georgeanne Howard flees her fiancé, the uber-wealthy owner of the Seattle Chinooks, the day of their wedding. One of the team’s players, John Kowalsky, inadvertently helps her get away. He takes her to his beach house so she can regroup and come up with a plan. This is the low point of her life, after all—she has no clothes except a tight dress and only 7 dollars in her wallet. Yet this is a romance novel, so it’s not surprising that they end up in bed together.

Georgie is young and naive, and she instantly falls for him. He, on the other hand, wants to stay out of trouble with the team owner, so he buys her a plane ticket back to Texas. She’s had a tough life with some kind of learning disability and has grown up thinking the only thing she can do is cook well and be friendly and charming. And she decides she doesn’t want to go back to her crappy life. So she stays in Seattle, landing a job at a catering firm (due to her cooking expertise, fortunately) and slowly working her way up until she’s a successful caterer herself. The only hitch: she got pregnant on the night with John, and she doesn’t tell him about their daughter, Lexie.

Seven years later, he finds out about Lexie, and he’s understandably pissed (even though it’s also somewhat understandable—though clearly wrong—that Georgie never told him). She reluctantly lets John into Lexie’s life, although she worries about his influence. But as it turns out, he adores Lexie and they get along very well.

Okay, so this book isn’t perfect. Georgie and John fight a lot and he really is a jerk for most of the book. He’s crude and rude in general, as well as specifically to Georgie. He sometimes tries to be better, but they still fight a lot, and that’s an issue I sometimes have with the enemies-to-lovers trope—are the things that were done and said during the enemy phase truly forgivable? I’m not entirely sure here, but I do believe Georgie forgave him. Also, Georgie thinking she’s fat at tall and 140 lbs. gets old. I mean, I know that’s the way it is, but still, annoying.

Gibson writes good characters, in the sense of being well-drawn and very distinct from each other. The dialogue is great and Georgie’s southern-inspired monologues (which John calls rambling and which drive him crazy when they first meet) are funny and fairly true-to-reality. Why use five words when you can do it with twenty? Gibson’s books also feature lots of palpable sexual tension that delivers when it should. I suppose these are the things that drew me into the story despite several potential issues for me.