Exiting an NHL career early because of concussions was never in Greyson Scott’s plan, but things hadn’t happened according to plan for a long time. Turning to coaching in the closest thing to a hometown he’s ever had becomes the next best answer…
But when he sees the only girl he’s ever loved at the tryout - for her son, no doubt- he rethinks this decision.
Thinking about seeing her in the stands looking down at him with a husband by her side all season long just about kills him.
His urgent mission- find out the kid’s last name and make sure he doesn’t make his team.
———
Getting married to her husband wasn’t her first choice, and neither was ending up a divorcee at 31. But Jules finally escaped the loveless marriage with her new little love - her eight-year-old son Canyon.
Her new plans- move back to her hometown, sign Canyon up for a hockey tryout at her old rink, and create their new life together.
It’s only when she sees familiar handwriting on the tryout sign-in sheet that she questions all of her old and new plans.
As a former competitive figure skater, S.C. Kate grew up in rinks and loves them as settings for her contemporary sports romance stories. She lives in metro-Detroit and still frequents arenas to cheer on her siblings during hockey games.
When not writing, she is obsessed with outdoor skating, iced coffee, and traveling around Northern Michigan.
The writing was so immature and poorly edited. If you’re going to say “she was fucking mad” say she was fucking mad instead of f’ing mad. There were typos and so many dashes that I lost count. Misspelling the fmc’s name really knocked it out of the park though.
The way the mmc threw around his toxic masculinity and he needs to “man up and not be such a pussy”. Why does toxic masculinity get written into romance novels? Why!! I read romance novels to get away from toxic masculinity 😭
The story wasn’t fully developed. The ending?! What?? You’re going to ignore all the shit that went on and have a hospital bed “engagement?” Thanks I hate it.
The idea of this was so great. Second chance high school sweethearts that were forced to breakup? Give it to me. But not in this book.
Note: I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Trigger warnings: Domestic abuse, assault, alcoholism.
Well, this book could've gone better. After spending a day and night and half a morning on this, I deserve medals for finishing this.
What was addictive writing lacked in proper connection with the characters, questionable decisions made by characters, and so much miscommunication and misjudgement...I can't even.
And 46 chapters for insta love and instant re-connection? Really? I deserved better than this false advertising of a long swoony romance.
So much hope, as I picked this book up based on the figure skating heroine and was eager to see what issues and romances she dealt with.
But nope, there was almost none of it. Leaving me utterly and completely disappointed.
So much hope, dashed all because of this novel. Sigh.
Miscommunication trope, insta-love/reconciliation, a ton of errors, pacing issues, unanswered questions, fade to black, and a weird amount misogynistic tropes/jokes.
Jules is just so dull and has never made a hard decision in her life. Instead of fighting for anything she wants, she mostly just accepts people telling her what she should do. Grey can’t process his feelings like an adult and spends a good chunk of his time condemning male characters for doing things he deems is “for girls”…like casting a broken hand after punching a brick wall. #justgirlythings🤪
I did however like the found family aspect of it and I liked the premise of the plot.
I thought this series could become my new drug, because I needed more of that hockey stuff after reading Icebreaker, but boy was I wrong.
First of all, the things I liked: - the hockey aspect - the kid - the length (because thank god it had less than 300 pages)
That’s it 🙂
And now, let the rant begin:
THIS MAN. It’s a wonder I don’t have a concussion with all the face palms and head shaking I did because of him. Can I even call him a “man”, when he’s acting more like a child than the 8 year old in the book. He is such a baby and definitely not in need of a girlfriend. He needs a mother. And I think he knew that too, because I stopped counting at one point, how often he talked about Jules mothering him or how often he actually called her “little mama”. He at one point even said: ,,she’s such a milf” while being dead serious. In that moment, I instead, wished to be dead. But it gets worse. He’s also the definition of toxic masculinity. Open a dictionary, search the meaning, and you’ll be looking at his stupid face. Him saying things like: “man up”, “men don’t cry” and telling an eight year old child he should carry his own sport bag (which obviously was way to heavy for a gnome like him) made me ick so much. He couldn’t even were a cast, because that’s something only weak girls would do. His hand was shattered, WHAT BETTER IDEA DID YOU HAVE?? And now you may ask how he broke his hand. Well, he punished a wall. A BRICK Wall. This man was like: “how could I possibly solve my problems? Hmmmm…oh a wall…SMASH” And than this tough guy didn’t even want to go to the hospital, because he’s scared of them. And I would never make fun of something like this, but we’re talking about the guy who probably wouldn’t even buy tampons for his girlfriend if she needed them, because that’s a thing real men would never do. So yeah, I’m definitely making funk of his twisted mindset. And he also has anger management issues, that made him break his hand a secondary time, because my guy forget his already injured hand and punched a man because violence is apparently the solution. And he did it in front of the child too. He’s stupid stupid. But maybe he’s missing all his braincells because of all his concussion…because guess what, he loves punching other people on the ice too.
But enough about him, let’s talk about her. Jules. Or juju. Which, by the way, is the most stupid nickname I’ve ever heard. She was the most cliché, shy teenager in Highschool you could probably think about. No friends: check. Thought she’s ugly (while being beautiful): check. Inexperienced: check. And a complete wallflower: check. She had to make sure MULTIPLE TIMES if he was serious asking her out, BECAUSE HOW COULD ANYONE LOVE HER?!?! So to sum her up in one word, I would say boring. Because her only personality trait was being sad. And telling us every 5 minutes didn’t make the book better.
And now the backstory. The huge breakup, which should have made us all cry. It was SO STUPID. Why didn’t they use their brain for one second. It was miscommunication at its finest, or even better, NO COMMUNICATION AT ALL!!! And the huge plot that Kevin was the bad guy didn’t even make sense, because why should he break them apart without even knowing her. There’s the biggest plot hole ever but we just skipped it and never talked about it again. All of this storyline didn’t make sense.
But then I thought, maybe the smut could save a small part of it. Because I am a girl with priorities, yk. But then, the ultimate betrayal: there was none 🧍♀️It just faded into nothingness.
So yeah, I had a great time 🙂
And I’m not going to read through this whole review and search for spelling mistakes, because it can’t be worse than her having a typo every 5 pages. I, as a German, was frustrated reading this. So I think I’m just letting my than/then mistakes just out there, because I’m not wasting any more time on this book.
dnf p135 horrible. and strangely sexist? the amount of times things like "“Only motherfucking girls get casts,” I spat" or "chatting like girls" were said was incredibly annoying and unnecessary. and their early relationship was sickening. not cute or sweet. the growling and the giggling and the 'wifed up'. gross. where was her independence. and Paige was so annoying. go away Paige. best character was canyon.
*ARC REVIEW* Our Overtime Release Date: October 29, 2021
2nd chance romance hockey/figure skating
It's been a while since I picked up a hockey romance but this one has to be my new favorite. I received this ARC from the author, Thank you to S.C. Kate for letting me read this book early. This book was so good I loved Greyson and Jule's story and their relationship. This book is the type of book you would have a cup of hot chocolate too with marshmallows while it's snowing outside. The writing and Storytelling by this is author is amazing . This is my first read by her but I am excited to read her more of her work in the future. This book is a comfort read and worth picking up and checking out.
tropes/tags: - second chance trope - single parent female MC - broke up because of misunderstanding trope is also huge on this one - figure skater female MC x hockey player male MC - kinda red flag male MC (in my opinion, at least) - incorrect punctuations/capitalization (format really irked me to death) - 1st POV dual
2 out of 5 stars
And that my friends, is how you don’t do the second chance trope. I was hella ready for all the angst and the scene where they finally communicate with each other and find out everything was a big misunderstanding, but I was so mad at how and why it all happened. So all of the 9 years wasted because of some fabricated breakup text message? Girlie couldn’t have verified it or something? She knew the text was odd because Grey didn’t type that way and she was just like, alright, okay, I’ll accept that. She didn’t try asking Paige or literally anyone in their friend group for confirmation? Miscommunication trope done right is a masterpiece but anything else, it becomes terrible.
I was also upset that they had sex immediately after they first talked about it. Everything moved so fast that I don’t think the tension was prolonged. I wanted the tension, I wanted the angst. I guess some people dig the easily-resolved problems but I want the tension! The push and the pull. The does he/she still love me? I want to see them growing back with each other. But that didn’t happen, unfortunately. The whole Kevin thing wrapped up pretty fast in the end as well. So it was mentioned that she was domestically abused and I thought that could really be a whole subplot or could be explored but everything Kevin was just brushed under the rug so they can get their happy ending (which, I guess, they deserve, fine). But also, I wonder what ever happened to Jules’ grandparents. I need my resolution!
Other things I hated: - So many syntax errors. Missed commas, improper capitalization (or lack thereof), f’ing and 7’s like what is that even supposed to mean? I tried turning a blind eye but it happened too often not to mention. - Greyson’s voice is described as gravelly multiple times to be noticed. What even is a gravelly voice? We get it Greyson has that type of voice but it got so repetitive. Please stop using that word.
Cute Read With So Much Potential 3.5 stars We didn’t get it right in our Gametime. But I think we were able to get it right in our Overtime. If we’re together, we’ve really won, baby.”
Overall, I wanna start off by saying that Our Overtime is genuinely a very cute read. It’s fun and a little angsty, it’s got the second chance romance that I’m always in love with no matter what, and it centers around a hockey player/coach and a single mother. But going into this, I sort of expected more of the heroine being an ice-skater, but that was just from when she was a teenager. What had drawn me to this book was the fact that it was an ice-skater/hockey player romance, but it was either a misunderstanding on my part or poor marketing. Aside from that, this book being about a single mother rekindling her love with her old boyfriend who is a hockey coach made up for it.
I don’t usually mind fade to black scenes, not everyone is comfortable writing sex scenes or sometimes it just doesnt fit the story, but seeing that this book was fade to black kind of surprised me. I feel like if we at least got something, it would’ve made their passion for reuniting so much better. You could really tell that Grey and Jules truly loved each other, they were so cute and especially Grey’s interactions with her son, Canyon. Grey is swoony and protective while Jules is a little bit more reserved. The two of them had really amazing chemistry and made for such a cute little family.
The epilogue surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to find out who book two was gonna be about, seeing as we hardly knew anything of that character, but I’m not any less excited about it. There were a few unanswered questions, some, where we’re made to assume what happened. There's also a bit about DV and physical abuse, but NOT from our hero, Grey. Things were brought up for plot, we’re told what happens, not really shown, and there’s some typos.
All in all, if you’re just wanting a cute little second chance, small town romance, this would be a really good one. Despite everything, I really enjoyed it, the potential is there, just the execution slightly lacked. I’ll definitely continue with the series!
This book!!! It was so heartwarming and lovely. Lovers when they were teenagers but the two were lost for 10 years without each other; beautifully written. I would 100% recommend if you want a heart warming romance with some secrets.
This book was honestly just kind of blah. I originally saw it on TikTok and added it to my tbr immediately because it had so much potential but it let me down.
First I just want to say that there were some misogynistic comments throughout this book that I did not appreciate. On top of that I couldn’t connect to any of the characters or feel a genuine connection between them. Everything about the pacing of this book was off which definitely didn’t help.
We also have insta love which is my leave favorite trope and it essentially happens twice in this book. There was also the miscommunication trope, another one I dislike. I also thought this would be filled with more hockey but I didn’t get enough from it.
Overall, this book contained tropes I dislike, had weird pacing, and didn’t have good characters in my opinion.
Love this book so glad to be an ARC for it. S.C. Kate did some great writing. I could feel the chemistry for Grey and Jules. So happy to see how more people like this book. Cannot wait to get more from S.C. Kate. Hope you all enjoy her writing as much as I do. @authorsc_kate @nishasbooksandcoffeepr #authorpromo #promosignup #hockeyromance #sportsromance #secondchanceromance #bookstagram #authorsofinstagram #booklover #bookstagrammer #nishasbookpr #nishasbooksandcoffee
I was able to make it on the ARC team and I just want to say WOW what a book! Just the way it began with how they would see each other to the ending. I feel in love with Jules and Grey. Love how during the story it flashes back in time to when/how they met and fell in love. They are an absolute great couple and a definition of first true love! Great book!!
Loved it so so much. just sad no ones going to ever love me like Grey loved Jules. crying fr lol. such a beautiful and sweet book! As a soon as I saw it on tiktok and read the short summary of it I was sold. I RAN to read it! Can't wait for #2 book!!
If you want an easy read to finish, this could be a contender. But then you will have, terribly written dialogue and feelings, toxic masculinity, bad editing, and a boring plot that is so foreseeable you don't even have to read it. The writing isn't worth more than one star, this book only got two cause it was easy to read