Title: The Playmaker
Author: Dakota Madison
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Sports Romance
Rating: 4 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by Enchanted Book Promotions in exchange for an honest review.
THE PLAYMAKER is Part Two of the FIRE ON ICE series.
Kian Kavanagh, Mr. Fire on Ice, has just been called up to play hockey for the NHL’s new expansion team in Seattle. Finally playing in the NHL is a dream come true…except for one thing. Kian has to leave Northern Arizona and the love of his life, Taylor Thompson, to pursue his dream.
Taylor Thompson thinks she’s got life figured out. She’ll finish her final semester of college then move to Seattle to attend graduate school and be with her man. Until one fateful night when Taylor’s world is complete shattered and everything she’s ever wanted–everything she’s ever hoped for–is called into question.
Will Kian’s love be enough to help put Taylor’s shattered world back together again or will tragedy tear them apart?
This NEW ADULT ROMANCE contains MATURE LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE and CONTENT indented for ADULT READERS (18+).
The story of Kian and Taylor continues in The Playmaker, the second book in the Fire on Ice series. Kian has moved into premier league hockey, and is more popular than ever in the world of hockey. While things are looking up for him career-wise, this also means spending less time with Taylor, and more time away from home.
Meanwhile Taylor is still studying for her degree and her chance to go to graduate school. But with a stalker still on the look out for her, something may happen that’ll turn her entire world upside down.
Kian has a lot of identity issues during this book, which actually bothered me. Why does he keep insisting he’s not good enough for Taylor? It’s like all his insecurities about his childhood, about not being the person he wants to be, all come leaping out in this installment. I don’t mind character development, but it seemed like Kian actually put a step backward instead of forward.
Back to Taylor. She has a lot of insecurities to spread around as well, but hers are at least founded upon solid reasons, or upon things that happened to her recently. I liked her more than in the last book. She’s more independent, less eager to rely on Kian for everything, and she’s a more complex, rounded character than she was before.
The story was actually even better than in the previous book, because now we already knew the characters, and we could jump straight into the story itself.
As before, I really enjoyed the down-to-earth writing style, the character interactions, the secondary characters and the story itself. It was a pleasant, light read.
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