On the last Friday of every month, Carol at Reading Ladies Book Club hosts Captivating Characters where you can share your post about the most captivating character (real or fictional) you encountered in the past month.
This Month's Captivating Character: Kace Elliot
Published by Big Dog Books, LLC on April 7, 2026
Age/Genres: Adult, Sports, Romance
Rating:
Goodreads
Kace Elliott is the hockey player with a genius IQ and a secret side hustle in applied physics. He’s falling for his research partner, but she doesn’t know who he is outside of the lab. Now, the closer they get, the harder it becomes for him to keep his two worlds from colliding.
On the ice, I’m Kace Elliott—starting goalie for the Pittsburgh Titans, fighting to prove myself in the playoffs. Off it, I’m William—a scientific researcher, quietly holding on to the academic world I’ll return to when hockey is over. Both versions are real, they just aren’t meant to overlap.
Until Dr. Laurel Kent.
Laurel is brilliant, principled, and deeply rooted in a world where transparency matters. She knows me online as William, her intellectual equal, the man who shares her passion for data, late-night collaboration, and easy, unexpected chemistry. William is very much her type whereas athletes are not.
I need her to like the bigger part of me—the hockey player. When she meets me in person, as Kace, I make the choice to let her see the type of man she’s sworn off from ever dating. She gets the Titans goalie and all the craziness that comes with the playoffs. But here’s where it gets complicated: I make the dangerous decision not to tell her Kace and William are the same person.
By some stroke of luck, Laurel agrees to give Kace a shot, and our time together is more than I ever hoped for. The closer together we grow, the less she talks about William, and I convince myself I’ll tell her the truth when the timing is better, once I’m able to prove I’m more than the label she’s written off. But timing has a way of unraveling even the best intentions.
As the pressure of the playoffs intensifies, the boundary I’ve relied on becomes impossible to maintain. When Laurel discovers how closely intertwined my worlds really are, I’m faced with the cost of asking someone to love only part of me. And winning on the ice means nothing if I lose the woman who made me want to stop dividing my life in two.
Kace was a goalie with a genius IQ who surprised me in many ways. And, no, it wasn't the genius IQ part. There are too many well educated athletes out in the real world for me to buy into the dumb jock stereotype. What surprised me was how he was a successful professional hockey player yet he still wanted to be part of a research project. He had a full-time job and STILL was doing physics research on the side.
I also loved that he was able to dedicate time to both his passions. He made it to the NHL while earning a high level science degree from an esteemed institution. That takes a lot of dedication and good time management. He impressed me, and he impressed me as a romance hero as well. Definitely one I will remember.
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