Narrated by Hannah Altagracia & Stephen Borne
The blurb for Ice Breaker looked fun. I enjoy sports romance and I like to try new-to-me authors and narrators from time to time. Novella length audiobooks are a good entry point I think – they give a good taster but with less commitment.
Ice Breaker started well. The narration is solidly good without necessarily being stellar; Stephen Borne has a pleasant raspy huskiness to his voice and his female characters were well done. Hannah Altagracia had a believable enough hero voice without it being super deep and she delivered on Camila’s wide-eyed innocence.
Gray Larsen is a hockey player for the Nashville Predators and needs a new publicist. He punched his previous publicist in the face after he (the publicist) leaked footage of Gray and a woman with whom he was on a date which made the woman look bad. The Predators’ publicist (who for some reason doesn’t represent him and can’t?) suggests Camila Gomes.
Camila doesn’t date athletes. Her sister was cheated on (and worse) by an athlete and subsequently died when her car drove off a bridge. It may have been an accident or the result of her mental distress. Nobody can know. Camila’s beloved adoptive brother was also an athlete and he’s clearly not a jerk so I must say the “no athletes” rule didn’t make a lot of sense to me. As it happened, that rule didn’t last a week after meeting Gray.
Gray and Camila are introduced by the team’s publicist and Gray is immediately smitten. I don’t mind a bit of insta-lust and the notion that a guy could take one look at a woman and say “I’m going to marry that woman” is admittedly romantic to me, so I was prepared to go with it. Camila and Gray clearly have matching sparks flying between them and a lot of chemistry.
But things went off the rails from there.
In no particular order, here is a non-exhaustive list of things I yelled *out loud* at the audiobook as I listened:
“Oh come on now! You don’t even know each other!”
This was after Camila (heretofore a virgin) was in the midst of sex with Gray for the first time and tells him she loves him. They have known each other less than a week and have spent less than 6 hours in each other’s company. This consisted of the meeting in the publicist’s office, some text messages through the week and one date where they played video games and pool for a couple of hours before having sex.
“You’ve only seen her TWO times!”
This was in the response to Gray thinking “she looks more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her”. (My husband pointed out, unhelpfully, that his statement could nonetheless be true.)
“WHAT???!!!”
This was a response to Gray telling Camilla, the very first time they had sex, that he just knew she didn’t want him to use a condom because she wanted to have his babies and that he wanted her to stay in bed with him until she was pregnant. There are So. Many. Things wrong with that statement. Not okay Gray.
Sometimes Gray thinks of Camila as a strong, smart, independent woman deserving of respect and autonomy. Other times he thinks of her as…. not.
“Can romance please be done with this?”
Was in response to Camila’s “will it fit?” (While I’m at it, the hymen is on the OUTSIDE not way up in there.)
“Creepy and gross!”
This was after Gray saw his jizz leaking from Camila and thought he’d like her to wear it all the time so that everyone would know “she’s mine”. *shudders*
Apart from the brief epilogue, the story takes place within an eight day period which is lightning fast. Like insta-lust, I don’t mind a bit of insta-love, but I can’t say I felt like the pair knew each other really so I’m not sure I bought it. Camila moves in after the first date – the same date where she told him she loved him and he told her he wanted to get her pregnant as soon as possible. According to the epilogue which takes place 5 years later, she was pregnant within about 3 months. They are still happily together after five years, so there’s that.
What did save the experience for me was the narration. As I said above, I enjoyed the performances even though I was not super-in-love with the text. I especially liked Stephen Borne’s narration – the difference between his natural husky, deep voice and the female character voices was impressive and there was no hint of caricature. I’d happily listen to him again. I liked Hannah Altagracia’s narration too, but not quite as much. I would not necessarily seek out a book because she was reading it but equally, it would not be any barrier for me to see her name listed.
There is definitely an audience for stories like Ice Breaker. The novella has a rating of 4.16 on Goodreads. But that audience is not me.
Kaetrin
Buy Ice Breaker by Nichole Rose on Amazon
