Living With B

Spiral by Bal Khabra
Published by Penguin Random House
Genre(s): Sports Romance
Format: E-Book
Pages: 367
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plot details

Hockey rookie Elias Westbrook is drowning in fame and pressure, while ballerina Sage Beaumont needs a publicity boost to land her dream role. When the two agree to fake date for mutual benefit, sparks fly—and the line between pretend and real quickly blurs. But with their futures on the line, they must decide if their growing feelings are worth the risk.

introduction to the lovebirds

Sage Beaumont is a struggling ballerina living in New York City who falls head over heels with Mr. Elias Westbrook. She is sarcastic, independent, and a girls girl. Sage is one of those people who you either love her, or hate her. I am apart of the latter party. She and I did not get along initially, but as I read more and more, I found my enthusiasm for Sage dwindled. And it dwindled quickly.

Elias (Eli) Westbrook is a rookie hockey player who is struggling to perform up to his normal expectations. As the youngest hockey player on the Toronto Thunder, he is insecure and struggling. Eli, as a character, isn’t all that bad. He’s your standard golden retriever, hopeless romantic. Although he lacked character development, I think as a whole he was pretty standard for a book like this.

my thoughts

Bal Khabra has kept me in a chokehold since I first read Collide. I read Icebreaker not long before it and since I gave it a three star review, I thought “what the hell?!” Collide gave me everything I was missing from Icebreaker. When I saw that Spiral was being released as the second installment of the Off The Ice series, I was quick to pre-order it, and even quicker to request a Advanced Reader Copy. I did not get the ARC, but I did get my pre-order.

The excitement I felt was unmatched and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I loved the concept and product Khabra had given us the first time. I, unfortunetly, found that my excitement was short lived as I began reading.

Sage was quite a character, and not in the best of ways. She mentions how she wouldn’t use social media to give her an “up” in the ballet world and she also was very stern on the fact that she would not be in a fake-dating scenario. Well, she goes back on both of those things. Fine, you know, she’s a struggling artist and wants to make it big. I just couldn’t get over this at all.

Sage has some great quotes, but most of the time, she comes off as a mean girl. She is meant to be sarcastic, but I couldn’t help but to feel like I was in high school again.

Khabra also fell into the romance-novel-trope overhaul. She spent most of her time giving us an abundance of tropes like: fake dating, instant love, golden retriever boyfriend x black cat girlfriend, and much much more. Maybe this goes to show just how on the outs I am with romance, or maybe it shows the reliance of tropes many authors fall into.

I won’t say that the book, in it’s entirety, is bad. There are some sickeningly sweet moments between Eli and Sage. For instance, he brings extra gems with him to a dance recital just in case one falls off before she performs. Another time, Eli brings Sage flower, leading to a sweet interaction:

“Why did you bring me flowers?”
“Because I like seeing you light up …”

Sage Beaumont & Eli Westbrook (Page 139)

He’s just a hopeless romantic, y’all.

Even with these sweet moments and some relatable moments with Sage, I couldn’t make it through the rest of the book. Unfortunately, I ended up DNF’ing around 56%.

quotes i loved

Note to self: One bad situation doesn’t have to become a bad day. Sage, Page 11

Good things need to be celebrated because bad things will find a way to be acknowledged regardless.
Sage, Page 120

final verdict