Icebreaker by Hannah Grace

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This doesn’t even qualify as trash. It’s the smelly trash juice at the bottom of a dumpster.

I promise I do not pass out single-star ratings lightly. Even if I dislike something, I try to be conscientious of the fact that authors pour pieces of themselves into their writing. I am also an advocate of brain-off fluff. Sometimes life is hard, and we all need mindless entertainment to cope. However, I draw the line when a book doesn’t even pretend to have a story or somewhat believable characters. I expect even the silliest romance novels to make me root for something or someone, but Icebreaker didn’t do that. It wasn’t just a brain-off book; it consumed negative brain cells, and I feel stupider after reading it.

I didn’t even know PWOP existed outside of fanfiction and online spaces. I thought you at least had to have the semblance of a plot to receive a publishing deal, but apparently not. I feel like an old man yelling at a cloud because I’m genuinely worried for humanity after reading this. It’s definitely an adult novel, but I feel it only holds up to a child’s level of scrutiny. This isn’t even a fantasy book—it’s a contemporary romance. And yet there’s absolutely nothing in here indicative of real life or decisions real people would make. There are over 400 pages of inane antics and barely cohesive dramatics mixed among the scenes that would send your maidenly aunt swooning into a 30-year coma. Any time someone isn’t copulating or getting inebriated, they’re spewing obnoxious colloquial therapy speak and acting like introspective armchair psychologists who have life all figured out in their late teens and early twenties. My mind was consumed with nothing but long-suffering sighs and the constant refrain of, “I’m too old for this garbage.”

I only chose to read this for a seasonal Goodreads challenge, and I didn’t go into it expecting to love it. But I was at least hoping it would be fun-bad based on this recommendation from Shayne Topp: “This book is hilarious. It’s like if a Hallmark movie had tons of absolutely insane sex scenes and zero plot.” Unfortunately, I didn’t find Icebreaker to be fun-bad; it’s just bad-bad. I think this might be the sleaziest book I’ve read in my life. I seriously need to learn how to stop being a completionist and become a DNFer because I shouldn’t have wasted valuable time on this.

Note to future me: Reviews that say it all...

• Angie’s review
• Júlia’s review
• Amelia’s review

... Also, look back at your Kindle notes.

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𝓟.𝓢. This review was crossposted from Goodreads because it contains actual thoughts rather than a typically facetious single-sentence remark. View all my book ratings and pointless takes on Goodreads or The StoryGraph.