One of the things I love most about this extended world of hockey, created by RJ Scott and V.L. Locey is that it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Not every MC gets to be the best in the league and not every team wins the Stanley Cup. That dose of realism goes a long way toward making these books readable and relatable.

Back Check brings Joachim to Boston to replace retired defenseman Brady Rowe. While he has the skills to fill the holes on the ice, his life is a shambles of addiction and poor life choices. Nothing illustrates this more than him realizing he has fathered a child with a young woman, that in his drunken stupor, he has no memory of. Isaac has been caring for his sister’s daughter since her death. Now, the little girl is herself ill and the only thing that can save her is her biological father.

I really like how both of these men believe that their course of action is truly the best plan for all of them. I love how it takes the words of the child to make them realize what the reader has known all along is the right way to go. This book is full of feels and redemption. The underlying theme of the need for teamwork, communication, and found family run through both the main love story and the secondary ongoing story of the Boston Rebels

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Rating: 4 out of 5. ( )

On the whole, this one was OK as light reading at bedtime, and I understand even a romance novel needs to get its plot points from somewhere, but I found it really offputting how cavalierly one of the protagonists thought about non-biological parenthood, and as the biological father put himself first despite not having any involvement in the child's first two years. ( )