What's not to love in Sara Biren's new book Cold Day In The Sun. This book had me hooked from page one. Holland is an amazing character she's a tough, driven, and plays hockey on a boys team. I was rooting for her throughout this entire adorable book. The romance between her and Wes the co-captin of the boys team is everything I hoped for. Great book and a must read!!!

3.5/5...I loved that the main character was a girl who played hockey. I wanted a little more hockey, a little less romance, but it was still a cute book I would recommend to fans of Huntley Fitzpatrick or Kasie West.

(3.5 stars) There’s really not much to say about this book: it was short and sweet, and although the ending was good it was slightly unsatisfying. If you liked Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally, you’ll love this too.

I don’t want to talk much about the ending, though. Not just because of spoilers, but also because I recognise that not all books HAVE to be escapism and have that perfect, unshakeable HEA. Especially a YA novel! I’m the first person to loudly say that 99.999% of all high school couples break up, so it would be unfair and unrealistic of me to expect my teenaged book couples to be perfection. It just felt like there were a couple of issues left unexplored – by the end of the book, Wes and Holland have barely agreed to become a couple, let alone discussed their plans for university (and we already know they’re going to different universities).

But I don’t want to give the impression that the romance in this book is unsatisfying. It isn’t, it’s really cute! Wes was awesome, and although Holland messed him around a little, he never gave up on them. The family dynamics were also awesome. Unlike Catching Jordan, Holland’s dad is 100% behind his daughter doing whatever she wants, which was very refreshing to see. Holland’s relationship with her mum and three brothers was also TOTAL GOALS.

Now for the crux of the story: Holland being the only girl on her school’s boys’ team for ice hockey in Halcyon Days, Minnesota. I understand that school and university-level sports is a MASSIVE thing in America, which I personally find a little weird because the only thing in England that comes remotely close is the Oxbridge boat race. And that’s barely. But anyway, there’s a lot of media attention on Holland for her position – is she saying she’s too good for the girls’ team? Her two older brothers were captain – does she think she deserves to be captain too? There are a whole lot of people out there who think she’s taking a spot away from a more-deserving male player.

Holland also has a lot of supporters. Sometimes a few too many: it felt like everyone and their dog was telling her to ‘hold her head up high’, even when they didn’t even know her. It started to feel a little didactic and made Holland look weaker than she really is.

While the ending was slightly unfulfilling on the romantic front, its open-endedness in terms of Holland’s life (like, does she ever make captain?) definitely means the book will stick in my head for a while longer than it otherwise would have done.