Catherine Gayle - Breakaway

Portland Storm captain Eric “Zee” Zellinger knows how to get the job done, but leading his once elite team to victory is fast becoming a losing battle. He can’t lose focus now—not with his career on the line. But when his best friend’s little sister makes him an offer he can’t refuse, Eric could lose the drive the team relies on from their captain.
Still in a downward spiral after a life-altering event in college, Dana Campbell is desperate to try anything to break away from the horror of that fateful night—even enlisting the help of the only man she trusts completely.
No matter how irresistible she is or how tempting the offer, Eric might not be able to cross that line—especially with the team’s chance at the playoffs on the line. Now, Eric has to take one last shot, but will he choose Dana’s Breakaway chance at happiness or the move that could secure his career?

Comment: I got interested in this book two years ago, probably because it must have been recommended somewhere due to the romance being a slow burn. Since I tend to like those, I added this to my TBR. It would also feature athletes and I'm quite OK with that as well.

In this book we meet Dana Campbell, a young woman who has been an introvert for seven years, since something really bad happened to her at college (it's not that hard to guess what kind of bad thing it could be). Now, after a lot of counseling and therapy, she feels ready enough to try something harder to accomplish which is to find someone to help her, instead of her self efforts.

To do so, she travels and asks her friend Eric, a professional hockey player, who used to be her brother's best friend and with whom she feels comfortable and secure.

The problem is that Dana still feels trapped and it will take a lot of patience and possible false starts for her to deal with what she needs with Eric's help. Will he accept her call for help, especially by how weird it is? Or is she mistaken and Eric would not dream of refusing anything to her anyway...?

I hadn't tried anything by this author before so I was not expecting anything in particular when I started reading. The big secret of Dana's past is revealed pretty much on chapter one even though it wouldn't be hard to guess.

Still, I hoped this would be a good story on how to deal with a traumatic event, on how to move on and still allow yourself to be in love with someone you can trust.

This idea is what starts off the plot, when Dana - who has known Eric for years - asks him to help her with her trauma healing. 

Seriously. I would not even begin to imagine how someone could really cope with such a trauma and it does make sense to ask someone you could know wouldn't treat you wrong but... how odd, how embarrassing it is to expose oneself to someone who already knows all about you and about whom you don't have romantic feelings for (at first, obviously) but who - we discover! - does feel that way about you? It just felt so odd, just to make it easier, I suppose, how Dana decides to ask for this specific man's help.

This book has a mix of the "best friend's sister" and the "friends to lovers" tropes which I'm not against but which I can do without too. There's also the issue of this being told in alternate first POV narrators and we have both Eric and Dana's thoughts on what is happening.

Done well, this is a great tactic to allow the reader to connect more with what is happening but to be honest, it's irritating as everything because some thoughts just don't feel like something people would want to share with others. It feels weird. I think it's always a safer bet to use 3rd person and let the reader make their own notions on stuff.

So, to summarize, Dana's situation develops slowly and apart from some details, it does make sense she would want to fight against something she suffered but which she can't allow to define her anymore.

In the midst of all this emotional content, we still follow the two protagonists in their current lives, Eric is a professional hockey player and Dana starts sharing a lot of his time because of the help he gives her and to let others understands why she's around, they say they're a couple now. This creates some issue with her brother, etc, but more importantly, she is given a position with the team after the coach is told why she's around and she travels with the team too. I mean. What? In what world would a professional team of any sport do this in the middle of a season??

Of course this tactic was quite necessary to explain how Dana and Eric could maintain contact and slowly develop their intimacy but it's just so unlikely (and not really professional, I guess).

This said, there is a lot of hockey talk and references. For fans I already noticed some liked the amount of details, others think the details weren't all correct... for me it was indifferent since I barely understand the game (meaning, at all, only there's a goalkeeper and they have a league) but it was nice enough we could see how the characters were immersed in their roles and profession.

The romance felt very, very weak for me and not just because they don't rush into sex. I just failed to connect with them, to appreciate how their relationship was developing. It wasn't romantic. I can rationalize and appreciate how Dana took things into her own hands and tried to create her own choices but this is an almost too analytical approach to a serious issue and the fact they were friends still felt odd to me.

Other authors addressed the theme/trauma in other ways, some heroines still felt competent and brave in how they behaved and reacted but their stories were more romantic.

I'm not saying this is bad, but it was definitely not memorable.

Well, all things considered, this wasn't the type of book I imagined but the way it developed didn't really surprised me in a totally positive way regardless. That is why it's not a big grade...

Grade: 5/10