Release Review: Breaking The Ice: Beth Bolden
Breaking The Ice
Release Date June 18, 2025
Tropes: age gap, bi-awakening, pining, widower finding love, slow burn to burning, coach x assistant coach
Coach Gavin Blackburn has been through hell.
Three years ago, he was on top of the world, courted by the best teams in the NHL to coach their players.
His wife’s unexpected death destroyed him, and sent him running from hockey. He thought he’d left the sport behind forever, but when his ex-player shows up at his remote cabin, begging him to return to Portland University to coach the Evergreens again, he agrees.
The last thing Gavin expected was their mentor-student relationship to turn into something entirely different now that Zach is grown up. He certainly never expected to feel attraction again, or to feel it for a man. For Zach.
Or for Zach to want him back, with a passion Gavin couldn’t deny even if he wanted to.
He’s old, washed up, destroyed by old grief, and doesn’t believe he could be good for anyone, but maybe it’s own assumptions that need to be broken and re-made.
Maybe it’s Zach who needs to be the one who break him down and make him into something new. Give him something a wild, unexpected and unprecedented love affair.
These two in my favorite of the series so far. Zach is the assistant coach for the Portland U Evergreens hockey team, and he was determined to bring his old coach out of retirement, self-isolation, and back to being a head coach. And he managed what people thought was impossible.
The fact that he had a pesky little crush on Gavin when he was 18 and used to be on his team shouldn’t really matter. Except it does. Because now that Zach and Gavin are spending so much time together and the age difference is not a big deal, and they’re both single. It’s a lot of temptation. Gavin is a widower still dealing with issues related to his wife’s death, and he feels like he’s never going to be in a relationship. And even though Gavin is really tempted, he’s scared to go after it, so there are a lot of hot and cold moments between him and Zach.
The fact that he had a pesky little crush on Gavin when he was 18 and used to be on his team shouldn’t really matter. Except it does. Because now that Zach and Gavin are spending so much time together and the age difference is not a big deal, and they’re both single. It’s a lot of temptation. Gavin is a widower still dealing with issues related to his wife’s death, and he feels like he’s never going to be in a relationship. And even though Gavin is really tempted, he’s scared to go after it, so there are a lot of hot and cold moments between him and Zach.
Gavin is very damaged, confused, guilt-ridden, and scared of the whole situation. Zach is mature as well, and he really tries to be patient, but he’s also not going to be toyed with, and he has to take care of his own mental health. But I really liked these guys and thought they made a great team both with coaching and in their personal lives.
This is a beautiful, inspiring, slow-burn-gets-hot, age-gap, second-chance, forced-proximity love story about learning to live again and an unrequited crush finally coming to fruition. And about healing, hope, and finding joy and your place in the world, and finding that person who will be by your side in hard times and in good times. It also focuses on hockey and building a team, and rebuilding a career.
Zach was just such a patient and good guy who had such true feelings and admiration for Gavin. His pining and pain are real. And Zach was the only person I think that Gavin would’ve ever felt safe enough with to begin to push himself, allow himself to feel again, or to even come back out of his isolation into the real world. But when it looks like it’s all or nothing, he has to make a decision whether he’s in or out for good. They are trying to find the place that they’re meant to be, and they’re trying together to bring the team where they all want to be.
Zach was just such a patient and good guy who had such true feelings and admiration for Gavin. His pining and pain are real. And Zach was the only person I think that Gavin would’ve ever felt safe enough with to begin to push himself, allow himself to feel again, or to even come back out of his isolation into the real world. But when it looks like it’s all or nothing, he has to make a decision whether he’s in or out for good. They are trying to find the place that they’re meant to be, and they’re trying together to bring the team where they all want to be.
This also has the story of Morgan and Hayes floating around in the background, and I can’t wait for their book next. Talk about pining. Hayes has been pining longer than Zach was, but I did like Hayes and Zach's true friendship and how they could commiserate over their love, lives, or lack of.
Portland Evergreens
Series on Amazon
Amazon and KU
Goodreads
Tropes: double bi-awakening, friends/roommates-to-lovers, hockey player & football player
Brody’s got enough on his plate.
Recovering from a knee injury he hopes won’t keep him off the ice. His team, the Portland University Evergreens, have a brand new coach, and he’s hoping to impress the legendary leader. Plus, he's got to make a decision once and for all about playing professional hockey or using his love of science to go a totally different direction.
The last thing he needs is a sexual awakening at the large, calloused hands of his football player roommate.
Dean is big and brawny and taciturn, but he doesn’t need words to woo Brody. He wants Dean, and his brilliant "experiment" to test his attraction gives Brody all the scientific results he needs to know he's not straight.
Now, they're proving his theory with new pleasures every night, while pretending during the day that they’re just roommates.
Except the heat burns so hot between them, it doesn’t just melt all the ice on Brody’s rink, it melts all his beliefs about who he is and what he wants.
But even more, it destroys the lie that he can’t fall hard for a guy. Because Brody is falling hard. The only question is will Dean catch him?
Portland Evergreens #2
Read it on Amazon & Kindle Unlimited
Tropes: frenemies to lovers, opposites attract, player x player, virgin MC, tutoring, and sexy tutoring.
Malcolm’s all about checking off items in his Life Plan.
He’s made it to the first line on his hockey team, the Portland Evergreens. He’s made the Dean’s List the last four semesters. He’s right in line to graduate on time, and head to the pros. All steps on the ultimate goal of becoming the best front office guy in the NHL.
Elliott is the only fly in his ointment.
The younger, wilder forward parties every night, sleeping with everything with a pulse, and barely attending classes or practices.
It’s annoying, but Mal’s dealing with it, until their new coach insists Mal tutor Elliott to help him pass a class.
And until Elliott discovers Mal’s biggest secret: he’s been too busy checking off points on his life plan to get laid.
They’re fire and ice. Bad boy and virgin. They shouldn’t work at all. But the more time they spend together, on and off the ice, the more irresistible their chemistry becomes.
The more desperate Mal becomes for some of Elliott’s one-on-one tutoring—this time in bed.
But Elliott wants more than just sex. He wants to melt Mal’s icy cold shoulder and convince him there’s more to life—and love—than a plan.
On Thin Ice
Finn has lived with the pressure of hockey’s expectations since he was old enough to understand his father was one of the greatest the sport had ever known.He’s changed positions. Changed plans. Changed colleges. But he’s never managed to outrun the pressure.
When it starts ruining his performance on the ice, he knows he needs to find a way to conquer it once and for all.
Desperation sends him running to the one man he thinks can help him. Jacob Braun, a goalie who played against his father.
It doesn’t matter that they hated each other, Finn will use him—use everything—to figure out how to beat this mental block. Even seduce his father’s greatest enemy.
What Finn wasn’t expecting was that they don’t just burn hot in bed, but on the ice, too. And that, ultimately, it isn’t Jacob’s brain he wants to pick apart, it’s his heart he wants to own.
A lifelong Oregonian, Beth Bolden has just recently moved to North Carolina with her supportive husband and their sweet kitten, Earl Grey. Beth still believes in Keeping Portland Weird, and intends to be just as weird in Raleigh.
Beth has been writing practically since she learned the alphabet. Unfortunately, her first foray into novel writing, titled Big Bear with Sparkly Earrings, wasn’t a bestseller, but hope springs eternal. She’s published twenty novels and six short stories.
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