Mile High by Liz Tomforde
Genre: Realistic Fiction/Romance
Blurb (on back of book):
Zanders Chicago hockey isn’t complete without me—everyone’s favorite player to hate. I know my role, and I play it well. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy spending the majority of my game time in the penalty box before leaving the arena with a new girl on my arm each night.
What I don’t like is the new flight attendant on our team’s private plane. She works for me, not the other way around. But I’ll be sure to remind her of that, and I can guarantee, by the end of the season, she’ll be begging to quit her job.
But every road trip blurs the lines, and I can’t quite figure out if I keep pushing that flight attendant call button in order to push her buttons or if it’s more than that.
Stevie
I’ve been a flight attendant for years. I thought I’d see it all, but when my new job lands me onboard working for the most egotistical and self-righteous diva in the NHL, I start to second guess everything. Including the promise I made to myself of never hooking up with an athlete again…no matter how annoyingly tempting he may be.
Evan Zanders is unfiltered, unapologetic, and too attractive for his own good. He loves his image, but I hate everything about it.
Everything but him.
MY OPINION: ***
I found this book from online and I saw it was a hockey romance, so I knew I'd like it. It was a very enjoyable read and I loved both Zanders and Stevie, though they could irk me a little bit sometimes with how bad at communication they both were. The "issues" at hand sometimes felt trivial (at least some of them) but I looked past it because at the end of the day, it is a hockey romance and there's bound to be some melodrama.
Zanders is a star hockey player and one half of the good angel/bad devil duo of his team (spoiler alert: he's the "bad devil"). Except, he's not. He's built up this persona of being a "manwhore" and a shitty person constantly getting into fights for the media attention and he's gone so long with this image that he can't imagine letting it go and potentially losing his entire fanbase (I'm telling you, these were the trivial issues I was referring to). While I understood his "problems," it just honestly felt so stupid to me at times. I obviously am not some media star or NHL player but, like, he was so overdramatic about it. It was never that serious.
Stevie is a flight attendant on a private plane for Zanders's hockey team. She is expressly told not to fraternize with any of the players or else she will be fired (so stupid, tbh). However, of course, she can't seem to resist Zanders's charms. Stevie's character was also very representative of a lot of different identities, including being a Black female main character, but her biggest insecurity is what people think about her body and plus-sized self. This was NOT a trivial issue and I honestly think the author portrayed this issue in a very well-written and positive light, highlighting the dichotomy between body confidence, self-love, and insecurities.
Okay, obviously, Zanders and Stevie fall in love but because of his media persona he can't just commit to one girl and she can't get with a hockey player because of her job. It's all just a mess but they decide to try out the casual thing?? It obviously doesn't work so they start to get together in secret and it all just becomes this crazy, dramatic thing.
My biggest complaint with this book was how long it was. I enjoyed a very large amount of it but at times, I was TIRED. PLEASE just move on. STEP IT UP. It was SO long and it had NO business being the size of a classic novel. This is literally a hockey romance be for real. I have NO time to read and I should not be spending this long on a romance.
I think that the overall themes and issues covered within this book were very well developed. The romance definitely was well-written and I saw actual chemistry between the two characters, an area that has been lacking recently in the books I read. We also get to see MEN in therapy, which is SO refreshing in light of the toxic masculinity crisis constantly pervading contemporary society. I will say that the representation could have been more obviously stated, because the fact that Stevie is Black felt very glossed over and just mentioned in passing a couple of times. I feel like there's so many ways that identity could have been explored but it's basically almost ignored in this book.
Overall, I enjoyed this book but I gave it a three star rating because of how long and repetitive it got after a while. The second one was definitely better (stay tuned for that review). I'd still definitely recommend to any hockey romance fans out there, though this one is definitely less focused on the hockey aspect as the other popular hockey romances out there.
Main Character: Zanders, Stevie
Sidekick(s): Indy, Ryan, Maddison, etc
Villain(s): Media, misunderstandings, insecurities, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was real to life.
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