Overall Grade: A-/B+
Tropes: best friend’s little sister; teammate’s little sister; brother’s best friend; professional hockey romance; forbidden relationship; road trip romance
“And I knew even if we were about to set fire to the world we lived in now, I would gladly live in the ashes if it meant I got to be with him. We surrendered everything. We laid our old lives to rest, knowing there would be hardship and pain ahead of us. We jumped headfirst into the risk, hand in hand, willing to forsake it all in the name of each other. There was no walking away this time. There was no end to this summer.”
Among her words, Kandi Steiner wins your heart. She beguiles you with the type of romance that feels ageless, and her newest offering, Watch Your Mouth, is one of the many romances that have found a permanent space in my heart. Jaxson Brittain and Grace Tanev are everything you love about romance: attraction for days and a need for each other that transcends time and space. Each moment of this story was emotionally palpable. One minute, you find yourself laughing at Grace’s attempts (and successes) to add light to Jaxson’s safe, darkened world. The next minute, your panties are damp, and your glasses are fogging from their eroticism. Each step of the book pulls you deeper into their adventures, and Steiner doesn’t miss a step with the only exception being the forbidden trope.
I try to avoid critiquing a book on its tropes because there are definite characteristics of tropes that seem required to the genre. However, I want to speak to Steiner’s handling of Jaxson and Grace’s coupling. I get it. Really, I get it: teammate code, bro code, girl code…it’s all wrapped up in integrity and trust. But I really, really want to read stories where the younger sister or best friend can feel drawn to each other, and it doesn’t end up being forbidden. Jaxson and Grace have bigger issues to handle without having to handle the need for her brother’s approval: his need to set boundaries with an abusive father and her need to accept her choices for the future as well as help her family recognize her value as more than her brother’s younger sister. I usually inhale Steiner’s stories, but I found myself taking breaks from this story because I grew tired of Jaxson and Grace’s internal struggles about a future together, Once they recognized their depth of feelings for the other, the story took off for me. I understand that a story has a requirement for tension. Steiner prides herself in the crafting of angst in her stories, but I think angst could have been wrought in other ways that upended the staid challenge of an older brother’s or teammate’s approval. In 2023, I think we can move beyond that.
All of that said, I still love Watch Your Mouth. I love how Jaxson and Grace complete each other; I love how Grace challenges Jaxson’s boundaries so he can rewrite his own; I love how Jaxson loves Grace from the depths of himself; I love the found family of the Ospreys and the promise of future stories for Daddy P and Coach McCabe. And I love the spice and drama of Jaxson and Grace’s story. Once they found their power in each other, Watch Your Mouth was like a slap shot to the net, and it managed to be another huge score in Kandi Steiner’s Kings of the Ice series.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 