Any Way You Slice It by Kristine Carlson AsselinMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This slightly missed the mark for me.
Penelope Spauldings' family run a pizza restaurant, the best pizza restaurant in her small town, called the Slice. She feels weighed down by her father's ambitions, which are for her to go to culinary school and then help him set up a pizza empire, heck she already works 30 hours a week at the restaurant as well as go to school. Her only me time is when she skates at the local rink in free skate time, but her father would kill her if she ever played hockey.
Penelope used to be best friends with Jake, until 'the incident' when they were eight years old, now they never speak and Jake is most definitely a bad boy(view spoiler). One day whilst skating alone Penelope in knocked into the side of the rink by Jake to stop her from running over a small child, he then goads her into trying to score a goal and invites her to play for his ice-hockey team, the Rink Rats.
Meantime, Penelope's dad has got them a slot on a reality TV show called Local Flavor which specialises in filming small local outlets and allowing viewers to tweet live comments on the show.
Add in the Varsity hockey team led by (boo hiss) Warren, Jake's arch nemesis and you have a whole cocktail of teen angst reminiscent of a classic John Hughes movie. Only it never quite happens. The emphasis is strongly on the hockey, but even then we don't really get many matches, its mainly training. The reality TV section is a bit of a on-hit wonder, even Penelope's confrontation with her father over playing hockey is fairly short and muted.
Perhaps my complaints are because I'm an adult woman reading a YA book and maybe a 14 year old would find this entirely the right length and level of detail.
Anyway, this was a sweet YA sports romance.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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