DELAYED PENALTY (Pilots Hockey #1) by Sophia Henry-a review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date September 1, 2015

She closed her heart long ago. He just wants to open her mind. The debut of Sophia Henry’s red-hot Detroit Pilots series introduces a hockey team full of complicated men who fight for love.

Auden Berezin is used to losing people: her father, her mother, her first love. Now, just when she believes those childhood wounds are finally healing, she loses something else: the soccer scholarship that was her ticket to college. Scrambling to earn tuition money, she’s relieved to find a gig translating for a Russian minor-league hockey player—until she realizes that he’s the same dangerously sexy jerk who propositioned her at the bar the night before.

Equal parts muscle and scar tissue, Aleksandr Varenkov knows about trauma. Maybe that’s what draws him to Auden. He also lost his family too young, and he channeled the pain into his passions: first hockey, then vodka and women. But all that seems to just melt away the instant he kisses Auden and feels a jolt of desire as sudden and surprising as a hard check on the ice.

After everything she’s been through, Auden can’t bring herself to trust any man, let alone a hot-headed puck jockey with a bad reputation. Aleksandr just hopes she’ll give him a chance—long enough to prove he’s finally met the one who makes him want to change.

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REVIEW: DELAYED PENALTY is the first installment in first-time author Sophia Henry’s new adult, contemporary PILOTS HOCKEY sports romance series focusing on the minor league hockey team the Detroit Pilots. This is college junior Auden Berezin, and Russian hockey player Aleksandr Varenkov’s storyline.

Told from first person point of view (Auden) DELAYED PENALTY follows twenty year old Auden as she is hired to be Aleksandr’s Russian interpreter/ translator for media interviews and press releases. Aleksandr’s reputation with the ‘puck bunnies’ finds our heroine sitting in judgment before ever meeting the young Russian hockey player, and his ‘sexual’ come-ons and one liners do nothing to change Auden’s mind about her preconceived notions.

Following the murder of her mother fourteen years earlier, Auden was raised in Detroit by her Russian grandparents; she is fluent in Russian reading, translation and speech, and her grandfather’s connections to minor league hockey find Auden’s latest assignment translating for the number one player on the Detroit Pilots. What ensues is a building relationship between twenty year old Aleksandr and Auden-an enemies to friends to lovers scenario that falters when perceived betrayal breaks the heart.

Auden’s life has been a series of losses and thusly she has some issues of self worth and self esteem-never knowing her father; the murder of her mother; and the loss of her soccer scholarship she so desperately coveted. But starting a relationship during the winter/Christmas break would ensure another loss knowing that Aleksandr’s time in the minor league has an expiry date-just long enough until he is called up to the NHL. Saying that, I had a difficult time connecting to Aleksandr and Auden as a couple-for a good portion of the storyline the couple are not together; there are some issues of trust that had to be addressed; and Aleksandr’s career as a hockey player meant our hero was travelling throughout the story.

The secondary and supporting players include Auden’s long suffering grandparents whose own lives were destroyed with the death of their daughter, but secrets yet to be revealed will hit too close to home. We are introduced to several members of the Detroit Pilots hockey team, Auden’s best friend KK, as well as Auden’s band mates once her interest in music begins to take off.

The world building focuses on the building relationship between Auden and Aleksandr: their backstories, histories and personal heartbreak. With the introduction of several of the Detroit Pilots team member we are witness to some of the friction and animosity between players and friends.

DELAYED PENALTY is an interesting storyline with some colorful and energetic characters but it read more like a YA novel than NA. Our heroine is a virgin whose self esteem issues are adolescent in nature; small things, even joking around, seem to set her off. Aleksandr’s backstory is heartbreaking as well, but he is not one to ruminate constantly about the ‘what ifs’ and ‘whys’. The $ex scene(s) are mostly implied; there are no sexually graphic scenarios or text.

Copy supplied by the publisher through Netgalley.

Reviewed by Sandy