Release Reviews: Big Stick Energy: Sarina Bowen
Big Stick Energy
New York Legends Hockey #2
New York Legends Hockey #2
June 30, 2026
A hockey team captain and a bubbly staffer mix business with pleasure when they start fake dating through the wedding season in this hot sports romance perfect for fans of Mariana Zapata and Elle Kennedy.
Darcy Kendrick is used to putting out fires. As an overworked admin to a hockey team, she’s seen it all. But nothing prepares her for accidentally DMing her very private, very NSFW fantasy to the subject of this fantasy: team captain Eric Tremaine. Nobody actually dies of embarrassment. Right?
But when a wedding invite puts them on a collision course with her chaotic family and his emotionally fraught past, Eric suggests a plan: they fake-date their way through the “Wedding Experience.” It’s mutually beneficial. Totally strategic. And definitely not real. Except between mini tacos, slow dances and lingering glances, Eric starts to wonder if the sharp-tongued assistant with a bottomless to-do list might be the one person who truly sees him. And for Darcy? The fire in her heart might be the only one she can’t put out.
It’s supposed to be fake. It’s supposed to be temporary. So why is it so hard to walk away?
Darcy is the GM‘s assistant for the New York Legends hockey team. She’s the Go-to girl who takes care of everything behind the scenes, and is smart, efficient, and a fixer of everything. Eric Tremaine is the team captain. He’s handsome, confident, reliable, a perfectionist, and a bit intimidating, but generally an overall nice and supportive guy. He is focused on hockey and also taking care of the guys on the team, but does not have much for just himself.
Darcy has a little problem in that she has quite a big crush on the team captain so she has to be a little guarded and prickly around him. Unfortunately, she makes a little social media blunder that alerts him to her real thoughts about Eric, and now he’s looking at her in a whole new light.
And there happens to be a big wedding experience event that they both have to attend coming up so they strike a deal to go together and be each other‘s family buffers.
And there happens to be a big wedding experience event that they both have to attend coming up so they strike a deal to go together and be each other‘s family buffers.
From a fake wedding date, to reckless fling, to secret dating, these two find new joy in life and support and understanding that they never had before. But he is an important hockey player and she works in admin, so Darcy is worried about complications and repercussions. I really liked these two together and they had great banter and chemistry. But I could understand how things were messy between the trauma bonding over their dysfunctional families, secrecy, and perceived power balances at work.
This is a forced proximity, secret fling, fake dating, romance centered around a pro hockey team. It brings back characters we met in the first book, and I am looking forward to the next book.
This is a forced proximity, secret fling, fake dating, romance centered around a pro hockey team. It brings back characters we met in the first book, and I am looking forward to the next book.
Darcy is the team’s administrative assistant, at the owner’s beck and call, making sure travel and events go off without a hitch both at home and on the road. She loves her job and the flexibility it gives her to take a few college classes every offseason as she works to complete her degree. She is not looking forward to the wedding experience that is planned for her half-brother. There is a lot of mix feelings and tension in her very non-traditional family.
Eric is the team captain, living and breathing hockey and his team. He is available for any of his teammates, in whatever capacity they may need, at any hour of the day or night -- that’s just what a good captain does. He is also dreading an upcoming wedding invitation that is dredging up pain for his family while he also feels happiness and excitement for the bride (who was formerly engaged to his brother). While he juggles his mother’s debilitating grief, and the pressures of leading his hockey team, he learns that the highly capable admin has a crush on him, the same admin who he has memorized minute details about her preferences and personality.
I loved watching these two develop their fake-dating plan and then execute it thinking they would leave the wedding events without ties to each other. This wedding is full of chaos and family drama to navigate and having someone uninvolved in each set of drama sounds like the easiest way to help. Eric is able to shield Darcy from some of her family's arrogance and abuse, while Darcy sees to the heart of Eric’s family drama in a sensitive but cut and dry way.
The ending of this book had me giggling with emotion. I loved everything about the way these two worked through the things that were keeping them apart. Eric’s teammates provide amazing comedic relief and add another level to the responsibilities Eric is juggling at the beginning of the story.
I loved the way this came together: the workplace romance, the fake-dating, and the secret-dating. Both Eric and Darcy have a variety of family issues to process and deal with over the course of the wedding extravaganza and the following months, giving many aspects to the story beyond the initial attraction.
I can’t wait for more from this team and this series. Sarina Bowen’s hockey romances are always a great balance of sport/business, character development, and humor.
Graphics from Authors' Facebook or promo materials
Thrown For A Loop
New York Legends Hockey #1
New York Legends Hockey #1
Our 4.5 star reviews
Fans suspect that the bad boy of hockey has a few skeletons in his closet. They have no idea he also has a sparkly bodysuit… #toepick!
When they met at figure skating camp ten years ago, Chase Merritt was a scrappy hockey player from the wrong part of town, and Zoe Carson was the up-and-coming ice princess. They fell in love faster than you can say triple toe loop, until Zoe makes a fateful error that ends up costing Chase dearly.
Almost a decade later, their fortunes are reversed. Chase is the MVP of the New York Legends hockey team, while Zoe—their new skating coach—has years’ worth of personal and professional bruises. It’s hard to face him again—all six feet and two hundred pounds of muscle and swagger.
And anger. Chase is in hot water with management, and refusing to work with Coach Zoe no matter how badly he needs to shore up his stride—and his image. Until a journalist digs up an old video of Zoe and Chase performing a skating program, and the internet goes wild.
Management seizes on the opportunity for a P.R. redemption, ordering Zoe and Chase to reprise their flashy routine.
Skating with him again—to a love song, of course—is pure agony. But it’s also Zoe’s only chance to unpack the truth of what really happened that night ten years ago. And to at least find forgiveness, if she can’t win back his heart.
Hate the Player
New York Legends Hockey #3
April 2027
Sarina Bowen is a #1 Amazon bestselling author, a 24-time USA Today bestseller, and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of contemporary novels. Formerly a derivatives trader on Wall Street, Sarina graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a BA in economics.
A New Englander whose Vermont ancestors cut timber and farmed the north country in the 1760s, Sarina is grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing and wi-fi during the intervening 250 years. She lives with her family on a few wooded acres in New Hampshire.
Sarina's books are published in more than 15 languages with twenty or so international publishers.
She is a sitting council member on the Authors Guild, with committee work in finance and advocacy.
0 comments