hockey girl loves drama boy

In a moment of reading serendipity, a friend recently recommended to me a book that I already had on my to-read list (and better yet, had already bought!). That book was Faith Erin Hicks’ 2023 young adult graphic novel Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy. I was sold at hockey + rom-com, but with a friend’s genuine excitement in play, it moved up to the top of the pile, and I finished it – and loved it – earlier this month, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

It should have been a night of triumph for Alix’s hockey team. But her mean teammate Lindsay decided to start up with her usual rude comments and today Alix, who usually tries to control her anger, let it finally run free. Alix lashes out and before she knows it, her coach is dragging her off Lindsay, and the invitation to the Canada National Women’s U18 Team’s summer camp is on the line.

She needs to learn how to control this anger, and she is sure Ezra, the popular and poised theater kid from her grade is the answer. So she asks for his help. But as they hang out and start get closer, Alix learns that there is more to Ezra than the cool front he puts on. And that maybe this friendship could become something more...

Alix loves hockey and hockey loves her back. However, her team captain Lindsey has been slowly breaking down that passion with bullying, and one day Alix snaps and responds with physical aggression. In an effort to learn how to control and move past her anger, Alix reaches out to well-liked, poised drama geek Ezra. With Ezra’s help, Alix hopes to prove to her coach that she deserves a spot at a prestigious hockey camp. Somewhere in the midst of hanging out at his family’s second hand store, going to a public ice skate (peak Canadian!), and helping to put together the school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, Alix and Ezra start to crush on each other. However, Ezra’s best friend is upset that he's hanging out with Alix, and Alix’s mom (a Canadian-famous artist) isn’t a fan of hockey for her own reasons… among other impediments. Will it all turn out in the end? Spoiler alert: there’s a rom-com worthy happy ending!

Author-illustrator Hicks’ characters are the highlight of this story. Quiet, stoic-seeming Aliz is learning to deal with an excess of emotion all of a sudden, and navigating complex and fraught family relationships as well as a romantic relationship for the first time. It’s enough to stress anyone out, but Alix’s drive to improve in hockey fuels changes in other areas of her life as well. Alix is open to new experiences, and so she grows! Other main character Ezra seems like he has his life together, but he too is struggling – with trust, and to be a good person – to not take advantage of those who love him. Together, they’re a delightful bundle of hormones, issues, and identity crises. How does Hicks turn this into a viable rom-com after all??! 

First, with character revelations, like the fact that Ezra is still figuring out his sexual identity, but he can fight homophobic bullies in the meantime! And then a road trip complete with pancakes and a car breakdown, and finally, with a hockey game and boba tea. Throw it all together, and you get a graphic novel that is, at times, too cute for words!

Hicks’ illustrations feature black ink linework on a white background, with some spots of sky blue as highlights, and really focus on details that move the plot along. There’s a lot of movement and emotion in Hicks’ drawings, which for this book were drawn first digitally, and then inked on paper with a watercolor brush. Some of my favorite scenes were ones that included hockey play, but my absolute favorite panels were two where Alix is thinking about Ezra and has a bunch of little hearts floating around her head, and then they “pop!” like bubbles as she convinces herself that there’s no way that Ezra could return her feelings. All that to say, the story would be great regardless, but the illustrations add wonderful layers of enjoyment and meaning. 

In all, Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy is a satisfying young adult romance with LGBTQ+ representation, excellent swoon factor, and art that will knock your socks off. 

Recommended for: fans of young adult romances and hockey, and anyone looking for an authentic and heartwarming story!

icebreaker

I find myself picking up more and more fantasy and science fiction these days, sometimes out of pure inclination, but also as a way to step away from the reading I do as an English teacher. However, every now and then something else will grab my attention, as A.L. Graziadei’s Icebreaker did. As a hockey fan, I couldn’t pass up their debut YA contemporary about rivals going to college together and (inevitably) falling in love in the face of high-stakes hockey pressure. 

 

Seventeen-year-old Mickey James III is a college freshman, a brother to five sisters, and a hockey legacy. With a father and a grandfather who have gone down in NHL history, Mickey is almost guaranteed the league's top draft spot.

The only person standing in his way is Jaysen Caulfield, a contender for the #1 spot and Mickey's infuriating (and infuriatingly attractive) teammate. When rivalry turns to something more, Mickey will have to decide what he really wants, and what he's willing to risk for it.

This is a story about falling in love, finding your team (on and off the ice), and choosing your own path.

 

Mickey James III is as self-aware as a white seventeen-year-old hockey prodigy-slash-legacy and college freshman could be. He’s also not doing so well. First of all, he’s fixated on going #1 in the NHL draft, second, he’s actively trying not to make close friends (he’s only going to be in college one year, after all), and third, he’s deeply depressed and hiding it from everyone who cares about him. When teammate (and fellow prodigy) Jaysen Caulfield shows up and seems to thrive off of shaking up Mickey’s world, he does the unthinkable: he starts falling for him. Icebreaker is a story about learning to listen to your feelings, learning to trust, and dealing (or not dealing) with mental illness – all under the pressure of the bright lights of an NHL future.

 

What I liked: okay, wow, I liked a lot about this book, so hold on tight. First off, the detail and description of/about hockey behind the scenes, and the reality of being a college athlete, were well done. I can’t claim to be a college athlete fiction completist, but I was a two-sport college athlete myself, and that portion of the book felt very true-to-life. Pre-season training, forced team bonding, figuring out a college campus while feeling woefully inadequate? Yep yep yep. Icebreaker’s authenticity of the behind-the-scenes chaos of college sporting life also reminded me strongly of an all-time favorite series, Ngozi Ukazu’s Check, Please! As did the forbidden pining for a teammate, lol.

 

Other things I loved: Mickey is the youngest of five sisters, all of whom are stars in their own right. I loved their back-and-forth banter, and the way they looked out for their little bro. I cannot express how much it reminded my own college experience, when my younger sister and I helped my brother adjust to campus life (yes, siblings do sometimes all go to the same school, lol). Mickey’s unabashed support and belief in his sisters was super sweet too, rounding out his character nicely. Combined with Mickey’s chip on the shoulder attitude and understandable abandonment issues, he definitely came across as a well-formed character, and a moody boy too. I also loved Mickey’s text message banter with Jaysen, his coming out scene(s), and the way that his hockey-famous family don’t make his sexual orientation a problem.

 

Weaknesses: Backstory and detail around Mickey’s childhood wasn’t introduced until quite late in the narrative. This left his self-identity out of focus, sort of hanging out in the background as he adapted to college, and experienced new-to-college adventures, until BAM! trauma ahead!! That was a little jarring. I think it makes sense – it’s authentic to the way humans think (avoid, avoid! avoid!!! until unavoidable), and the story is told in the first person after all. It was just a bit confusing on the reader side of things, as it was hard to understand Mickey’s unwavering focus on the draft as the be-all and end-all, and his fixation on a rivalry with Caulfield, without it. The college jock banter also felt half-formed. Some of it felt real, yes. But I think that the book would have benefited from about 20% more dialogue overall, to really get a sense of characters other than Mickey.

 

What I wanted more of: the James siblings! In Mickey’s eyes his sisters are certainly larger-than-life, and I feel like I could read a story centered around each one of them. I also wanted to know more about Nova Vintner, Mickey’s ex and best friend. The reader basically only gets to know her through texts, and I wanted more about her and how she and Mickey arrived at rock-solid friendship at age seventeen. There were also a couple of points where Graziadei mentions that the characters chatted about insignificant things, or important stuff… but then didn’t give details! As a reader, I would prefer to read those conversations than try to imagine them! (I didn’t know enough about the other characters to guess what they might talk about, and our protagonist Mickey is described as grumpy and socially stunted).

 

Overall, Icebreaker was a very enjoyable read as a fan of hockey, LGBTQ+ YA, and as a former college athlete. Though it wasn’t perfect, I was definitely rooting for Mickey (and Jaysen!), and I devoured their story in one day.

 

Recommended for: fans of hockey and Check, Please!, and those looking to round out their bookshelves with college-set YA, LGBTQ+ representation, and/or contemporaries that deal with mental health challenges.

check, please!: #hockey

When I held Ngozi Ukazu’s debut graphic novel Check, Please!: #Hockey for the first time in my hands, I thought about how much I loved it already (the entire comic is available online for free and I’ve been reading it for years), how perfect it was for my interests (hockey + baking + LGBTQ+ representation), and how it was going to solve all of my holiday gifting needs. I adore this story, and I think you will too, even if your preferred reading doesn’t include anything mentioned above. It’s just that loveable.

Helloooo, Internet Land. Bitty here! 

Y’all . . . I might not be ready for this. I may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur pâtissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It’s nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia! First of all? There’s checking. And then, there is there is Jack—our very attractive but moody captain.

A collection of the first half of the megapopular webcomic series of the same name, Check, Please!: #Hockey is the first book of a hilarious and stirring two-volume coming-of-age story about hockey, bros, and trying to find yourself during the best four years of your life.

Let’s get down to it: WHAT is in this book that makes it so beloved? I’ll level with you here: this is a cute story about a baker with a video channel who is also a former champion figure skater, who is ALSO a gay boy and a Southerner, and who is just starting college and joining a serious, competitive hockey team. In other words, it’s about a character with a lot of varied interests and identities, at a pivotal point in time. And Bitty (Eric Bittle, to be precise) isn’t special or perfect, he’s just a guy making friends, learning his new environment, and trying to be himself. It works because author-illustrator Ngozi has tapped into the best parts of the tropes referenced above (coming of age, coming out, etc.), deleted toxic masculinity from the equation, and presented the reader with a bunch of lovable goofballs as Bitty’s support system, hockey miscellany for laughs, and hijinks that will be familiar to anyone who has spent too much time with one group of people. It’s FUN. Good, clean fun (swearing and references to college-aged-shenanigans aside).

What does it do best? It’s funny, the angst is realistic, there are moments of tension and then superb hits of relief, the art is focused on the characters’ faces (so you see a lot of emotion). And, as mentioned, there’s acceptance, friendship, and eventually falling in love. The majority of the book is panel by panel storytelling over the first two years of Bitty's college career, and at the end there are extra comics from specific times and/or explanations of hockey lingo. There is also a section full of Bitty's tweets listed chronologically (for a good chunk of time Ngozi was into multi-platform storytelling, tweeting in character as Bitty). Taken as a whole, you really get a sense of Bitty's life and voice, and it's 100% endearing. 

Shortcomings... hmm, this is a tough one. This book was tailor-made for me, and so it's difficult to take a step back from it and evaluate it fairly. I will say that because this book started life as a webcomic, there are things that didn't make it into the final published edition that add to the context, liveliness and overall fun. Ngozi's Instagrams of personalized bookplates (with hilarious captions), commentary during live-drawing streams (available to Patreon patrons), and the blog posts (one for each "episode" of the comic, posted a day or two after they go up) all add to the world of Samwell, and I missed them as I reread the comic for review. Also I don't think Bitty's love of Beyoncé comes through as much. Weird!

In all, #Hockey is a kick, and graphic novel fans ages 14 and up will love it, even if they don't care much (or at all!) about hockey or baking.

Recommended for: hockey fans, graphic novel fans, and readers who like found families, happy/hopeful coming of age stories, and fun.

the survival kit

Unless you follow me on twitter (and even then), you may not know that I’ve become an intense hockey fan in the last year. Weird, huh? Here’s what happened: I moved to DC from Seattle, my hometown. I had years of indoctrination in Seattle sports fandom, and I wasn’t about to adopt my new city’s teams. HOWEVER. We don’t have NHL hockey in Seattle. And DC has a dynamic team, the Capitals. My friends are Caps fans. It took almost a year, but they converted me. *happy sigh*

What does this have to do with books? Well… Steph Su mentioned The Survival Kit on her blog last year, and I was caught by the mention of a hockey player. What?! Hockey never shows up in YA books. Neither does water polo (my own sport), for that matter. If you have a sports reference, it’s inevitably football/cheerleading, or at least that’s the way it seems. So, I decided that I’d read this book, come he-double-hockey-sticks or high water (see what i did there? i’m hilarious.).

When Rose’s mom dies, she leaves behind a brown paper bag labeled Rose’s Survival Kit. Inside the bag, Rose finds an iPod, with a to-be-determined playlist; a picture of peonies, for growing; a crystal heart, for loving; a paper star, for making a wish; and a paper kite, for letting go.

As Rose ponders the meaning of each item, she finds herself returning again and again to an unexpected source of comfort. Will is her family’s gardener, the school hockey star, and the only person who really understands what she’s going through. Can loss lead to love?

Rose, the recipient of the Survival Kit that gives this book its name, is dealing with grief and loss. She’s turned off emotions, she’s avoiding conflict, and she’s having trouble keeping it together. Enter a special kit, good friends, and a possible distraction in the form of schoolmate Will… and you have Rose’s perfect storm. Nothing is easy for Rose, and that, combined with descriptions of hope and struggling through pain, turn this from a clichéd ‘Mother dies’ novel into a complex rendering of an unthinkably sad situation.

What I liked: well, obviously the hockey. Unless you break out in hives at the mention of sport, this inclusion should be interesting to you. And yes, there are mentions of football and cheerleading to round things out. Freitas also does a great job of incorporating life (friends, guys, family dynamics) in with honest dialogue. The emotion was real. I teared up a time or two.

What I didn’t like: actually, the only thing I will mention here is the prose itself. And that was one chapter. The majority of the book worked, in other words. Just uneven in one, solitary place. I warned you.

Recommended for: fans of Sarah Dessen and Susane Colasanti (good YA contemporary romance, in other words), and those who find themselves even the tiniest bit curious about hockey.