The Top Romances of 2016 You Should Not Miss
By Alyssa Cole
Image via Crimson Romance
Hard Knocks by Ruby Lang
Hard Knocks is book two in the Portland, Oregon-set Practice Perfect series, and I enjoyed this book even more than the first. Lang writes funny, feisty, and quirky (I feel like this word has become a pejorative, but I mean it in the best possible way) characters finding love in all the wrong places.
Helen Frobisher Chang is a neurologist who is not dealing with her own father’s neurological condition well. Like, AT ALL. She’s sharp, smart, and quick thinking, but she cannot process her father’s mental decline. Instead, Helen finds herself swept up in a crusade against the local hockey team, and when she and player Adam Magnus go head to head, sparks fly. This book is so wonderful and witty, and the organic growth of the attraction between Helen and Adam, the conflict of his need to protect his career but her very valid concerns about high-impact sports, and Helen dealing with losing her father and what her growing feelings for Adam—who risks major injury every time he steps onto the ice—all combine to create a perfect romance.
If you enjoy sparring, banter, take-no-crap heroines, well-rounded sports heroes, and furtive masturbation (in the story, that is), this is the book for you.