The complex relationships of two Olympic ice skating dance teams give different views of skating for the gold. American skaters Kerry and Adam are out of gold medal contention, or at least Kerry thinks so, skating one last Olympics for the benefit of her partner, Adam, who is in love with her even after their personal relationship ended long ago. For Russian skaters Elena and Mikhail, Elena is driven to win gold by any means, to the point that she has demanded to be paired with Mikhail to accomplish her goal, much to Mikhail’s chagrin. In Russia, he isn’t given a choice. However, he sees the opportunity to gain asylum in the U.S., and he has information that he hopes will help to barter his escape from the ties his home country binds him with. Lucky for him, Kerry’s brother works with the C.I.A.

Even before he approaches Kerry to ask for her help, the chemistry between them sizzles, and yet a personal relationship is out of the question knowing what lies ahead of him.

The story follows their cross country trek to win Mikhail’s freedom from Russia, from his overbearing partner, and from a haunting past. Mikhail and Kerry discover they have much in common along their personal journeys to the Olympic dream. Followed by the Russian mafia and people with their own personal agendas to stop them, this is a thrilling tale that kept me reading to find out how it all unfolds. Ms. Bellacera does a brilliant job of creating well-rounded characters that you cheer for and boo for. There are even moments when you feel sorry for the antagonist—well almost.

In the interest of disclosure, there were many editing snafus. My favorite one was an errant search and replace, where the letters t-u-n-a were replaced with c-a-v-i-a-r and “whole word” clearly wasn’t selected. This created one spectacular word that stopped me dead in my tracks until I was able to solve the puzzle of what that word was meant to be. There was also one section of the story that stretched my imagination beyond belief – while the bad guys chased after Kerry and Mikhail, they had an uncanny ability to know exactly where they’d stopped. The truck stop for food I could buy, but later, when they switched cars, it didn’t make sense to me how the bad guys 1) knew they had stopped to do that, and 2) knew – traveling across the width of the entire country—which car lot and in which city they stopped (this also turned into a copyedit error—which city did they stop in?). That “bad guy” scene wasn’t necessary to the story or to the plot.

That being said, the occasional editing errors did not stop me from enjoying the story as a whole. It was a very entertaining read and I would highly recommend it.
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