Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on December 2, 2025
Age/Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Rating:
Goodreads
For fans of Emma Lord and Abbi Glines, Jennifer Iacopelli’s swoony, romantic new novel follows elite ice dancer Adriana Russo as she finds herself drawn to both her old dance partner and her new one.
Adriana Russo is figure skating royalty.
With gold-medalist parents, and her older sister headed to the Olympics, all she wants is to live up to the family name and stand atop the ice dance podium at the Junior World Championships. But fame doesn’t always mean fortune, and their legendary skating rink is struggling under the weight of her dad’s lavish lifestyle. The only thing keeping it afloat is a deal to host the rest of the Junior Worlds team before they leave for France.
That means training on the same ice as her first crush, Freddie, the partner she left when her growth spurt outpaced his. For the past two years, he’s barely acknowledged her existence, and she can’t even blame him for it.
When the family’s finances take another unexpected hit, losing the rink seems inevitable until her partner, Brayden, suggests they let the world believe what many have suspected: that their intense chemistry isn’t contained to the ice. Fans and sponsors alike take the bait, but keeping up the charade is harder than she ever imagined. And training alongside Freddie makes it worse, especially when pretending with Brayden starts to feel very real.
As the biggest competition of her life draws closer and her family’s legacy hangs in the balance, Adriana is caught between her past and present, between the golden future she’s worked so hard for, and the one she gave up long ago.
Adriana Russo was born to skate but being part of a famous skating family was not easy. Her parents were decorated figure skaters, and Adriana understood that she was a bit of a disappointment by choosing ice dancing. However, she loved the sport and made some big sacrifices for it, with the biggest being severing her relationship with her best friend, Freddie, when her growth spurt came before his. When all the Junior skaters gather at Kellynch to train for the world championship, old feelings rose to the surface which could derail Adriana's dreams of getting the gold.
I had my eye on this book for years, but you know how it goes with Mount TBR. I am so glad it's getting an adaptation and rerelease because this is the type of young adult story I love. Shortly after I started, I realized that this was a sort of spin on Persuasion too. Adriana suffered in much the same way as Anne with the family pressure, as well as the expectations of an elite athlete.
I have a thing for books featuring elite athletes. This is not a club I belong to, but their dedication and grit always draws me in. Like with most sports books, I felt the agony of defeat and thrill of success right along side all these wonderful skaters. Nothing like some tears, applause, and fist pumps to get me going, and there were plenty of those moments to experience in this story.
Love triangles are not my favorite. They work best for me when one choice is obviously better than the other. That was NOT the case here, but is it terrible to feel either suitor would be a worthy one? I suppose one could be left disappointed, but I was not. Perhaps it was because I also didn't see the romance as the central focus of this story (NOTE: I rarely do with young adult books).
To me, this was Adriana's story of self discovery. A young woman who lived in the shadow of her skating royalty parents and Olympic bound sister. She picked what her family thought was the "lesser" skating discipline and was constantly putting their needs before her own. This quest for her own gold medal helped her find her voice and know her worth, and I appreciated her personal journey. A bit of romance was the cherry on top.
Overall, I was captivated by Adriana's story. It was sweet, honest, and feel-good.
*ARC PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER
Published by Wednesday Books on June 18, 2024
Age/Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Rating:
Goodreads
A calculus nerd enlists her surly classmate’s help to win back her ex-boyfriend, but when sparks start to fly, she realizes there’s no algorithm for falling in love.
Marlowe Thompson understands a lot of things. She understands that calculus isn’t overwhelmingly beautiful to everyone, and that it typically kills the mood when you try to talk Python coding over beer pong. She understands people were surprised when golden boy Josh asked her out and she went from weird, math-obsessed Marlowe to half of their school’s couple goals. Unfortunately, Marlowe was surprised when Josh dumped her because he’d prefer a girlfriend who was more romantic. One with emotional depth.
But Marlowe has never failed anything in her life, and she isn’t about to start now. When she’s paired with Ashton Hayes for an English project, his black clothing and moody eyeliner cause a bit of a systems overload, and the dissonant sounds of his rock band make her brain itch. But when she discovers Ash's hidden stash of love songs, Marlowe makes a desperate deal to unleash her inner romantic heroine: if Ash will agree to help her write some love letters, she’ll calculate the perfect data analytics formula to make Ash's band go viral.
As the semester heats up with yearning love notes and late nights spent with a boy who escapes any box her brain tries to put him in, Marlowe starts to question if there’s really a set solution to love. Could a girl who has never met a problem she couldn’t solve have gotten the math so massively wrong?
Marlowe was determined to show her ex-boyfriend that she was good at love, but along the way, she makes a lot of discoveries about herself and her past relationship with Josh.
My heart ached for Marlowe when Josh broke up with her. This event amplified all her insecurities and made Marlowe feel as though she was not enough. In reality, she was fantastic. She was just wasting time trying to fit into someone else's idea of who and what she should be.
Thank goodness she was paired with Ash for an English project, otherwise Marlowe would never have learned what it was to be liked and appreciated for who she was. Their friendship was sweet, and how could I not delight in their shared love of romance novels. Yes, Ash was a rock star and a reader who was giving "romance lessons" to Marlowe via their weekly romance reading assignments.
There was a lot of love in this book which focused on friendship and self acceptance. There were some really great and meaningful family moments as well, though the interactions between Ash and Marlowe definitely stole the show.
Another great one from Kaylor!
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