Is a romance novel by a certain Hannah Grace, originally published in 2022, well, self-published, and then became a viral hit thanks to "BookTok," that godawful segment of the most godawful social media site, in 2024-5. The circumstances in which it saw print and sold well enough to appear in Waterstones and Tesco will be covered later on, but for now, know that it is a book of great awfulness, and thanks to its popularity, deserves thorough roasting. The reason for its popularity is because there's a lot of explicit shagging in it, usually awfully portrayed.

I didn't buy a copy. I am not giving Hannah Grace my money. There's a naughty PDF easily available online if you know what to search for specifically.

Executive Summary

Spoilt rich kids bang a lot. Also hockey.

A bit more detail, if you wouldn't mind?

I think I'll give you the biggest and most headbanging incident of the interminable banging. Our heroine, Anastasia or "Stassie" to distinguish her from the female lead of Fifty Shades of Shite, is having a liaison with the male lead, Nathan, who is a studly ice hockey player at an American university. During this, his eyes are "watching me closely as two of his fingers slide into me, finding my G-spot in 2.5 seconds."

Deary me. Did anyone else have a vision of a clock counting up to 2.5 seconds like I did? Is she getting fingerblasted off an ice hockey Chad or is she Max Verstappen getting a tyre change at Imola? And who was counting anyhow? Was there a stopwatch? I think we should be told. But I digress. Our tale begins at a fictional American university despite Hannah Grace being British, which of course is full of wealthy brats and lots of sports teams and no actual studying. Basically it's like how Animal House and other Yankistani media portray the American university experience - so it's likely probably wrong, and 20 years out of date because all high school and college settings in fiction are because that was when the authors were in high school or college. Our dauntless heroine is an Anastasia, or Stassie, who is a figure skater. We are told that she's composed and calm under pressure because she has a planner with everything meticulously booked in it, socially, classes wise, and training wise, but she is first seen popping off at her coach and skate partner for, erm, coaching her. That's not cool and calm and collected, people. And the telling not showing continues. She has a friend called Sabrina. Sabrina is supposed to be from North Africa but acts exactly the same as all the other hideous seppoid brats in the novel, just with the occasional piece of Arabic dropped in.

Also, I don't think Sabrina is a name that is popular in the Arab world. Though I may be corrected. I don't know. Maybe her parents were really into teenage witches.

We find out that Stassie (which sounds like a sexual health clinic) has a fuck buddy called Ryan because of course she does. Ryan is of no use to the plot and just exists as wish fulfilment that the reader, who is supposed to identify with Stassie, can have multiple studly menfolk on the go at once all of whom are well hung and have those abs that you only see on steroidal Hollywood actors. Speaking of wish fulfilment, Stassie is said to be athletic enough to be able to land a quad lutz, but also is curvy. I don't buy that. You know those skaters who can land a quad lutz? They ain't curvy, mate. They're athletic looking. Want proof? Tonya Harding before the Battle of Wounded Knee. Triple axel with double toe loop. Now look at her. No curves there. QED, fuckface. QED. But I digress. Our curvy, impossibly athletic, and magnetic enough of personality to have well built wammickers battling over her, then is forced to share the ice rink with the ice hockey team after someone sets fire to the generator that keeps the rink she normally practices on frozen. Why? Because the script needs the plot to happen. She finds an ice hockey player named Nathan who is your average shit romance hero (well built, hung like a mule - "there is absolutely no way it will fit in my mouth", egotistical and womanising but just happens to be won over by the heroine's charms because she's so perfect in every way), and fucks him in poorly written style again and again. Even though she hates ice hockey players. Why does she hate ice hockey players? No idea. She just does. File under script, plot, happen, needs. All her friends are annoying and shallow and her skate partner has a G-Wagon he got bought as a present. And he's a stalky piece of shit. He exists solely for Nathan, the male lead, to beat up on to show the latter's "really a nice guy" credentials. Why? Because actual character development requires effort, and why bother with that when BookTok only buys stuff for the banging. I'm not making that up by the way. They have videos where they tell you which pages have their most wankworthy sexy bits on. I have seen them.

That's it. That's Icebreaker. My naughty PDF rattles on for 383 pages. Of this, I could happily edit out 75 percent of it. There's only a quarter that advances the plot, the rest is all fucking or padding. Like, endless parties, drama between side characters (and there are many), and so forth. It is a book that despite being "properly" published, has the stench of self publishing about it. And that is because it is. Now. You may be aware that if we can go back to Formula 1 for a moment, assuming Stassie getting fingerblasted faster than a set of intermediates being put on a McLaren has left your mind, I recently discovered the phenomenon of the pay driver. This is where a wealthy chap (as in, 0.1 percent, billionaires' offspring tier wealthy) gets a seat in F1 by paying the team for it, or by bringing personal sponsorships who will pay the team for it. Hannah Grace is a literary pay driver. She did not, in fact, get Icebreaker published by actually convincing publishers that it's good or saleable. She got it published by having it thrown through print on demand then astroturfing it like fuckery all over the web. She, in the afterword, admits that she and her husband spent all her savings on this "dream" and then it became popular enough to be picked up genuinely. This makes the mind slightly boggle, if I'm honest. She chose to spend a large sum of money (given it was her and her husbands' savings, and she had to convince him to do this, it was likely significant) on a "dream" of creating yet another meandering, meaningless sports romance with fan fiction tier shagging in it and which contain lines like the following:

"I'm waiting for you to move your ass over here and sit on my face, Anastasia." Why, are you going to guess her weight?

"Oh my God. So, fucking, good, Anastasia. Jesus Christ, you're wet and ready for me." Nobody talks like that outside of these novels. Just get some dialogue from other than shite online porn. Please.

"'Whose pussy is this, Anastasia?' he gasps, his thrusts getting rougher and sloppier." This one boggles the mind. It's like he's just banging away at some random foof and then stops and thinks, who am I balls deep in? Where am I? What the fuck is going on here?

Yeah. This is like being a pay driver in F1 just to try and spin more than Nikita Mazepin. Why. It's not like the world isn't full of "jock fantasy" novels already. A certain Amy Award has a whole series of books with illustrated covers of chubby girls making eyes at American football players called The Cock down the Block and similar. A certain Emily Rath has one also about ice hockey players with the brilliant title of Pucking Around though I suspect it's a parody from what I've read of it and as such it will not be reviewed here. The name is kind of a giveaway. But you get the idea. There's mountains of the fuckers. And Icebreaker has sequels as well. I mean, if I were going to empty my savings accounts on getting my book printed and whoring it on social media, I would make it something actually worth writing. Anyone with a brain would.

Sigh.

I can hear the Stassie x Nathan stans already. You're just jealous. Let's see you do better. Alright. I will. I will write a campus romance novel that's better, and more honest, and with actual character development, for NaNoWriMo and IRON NODER this year. And it won't be about rich American princelings spending their parents' money while swapping STDs either. But real people. Who you can understand have such a bone-on for each other. And yes, it may contain spicy bits. Be afraid. Be very afraid.