Marek (Cold Fury Hockey #11)

This was a disappointment for me. Bluntly spoken: I thought Marek was a total douchebag and a jerk. He has so much anger inside him in the first half of the story, I wanted to slap some sense into him – yes, we know you werent told about your daughter, but puh-lease: werent you the prince who dumped his longtime girlfriend to sow his oats as a rookie in the NHL??
Somehow this gets glossed over too much in the story. Gracen is also an unsympathetic character: a toss between a mousy saint and a super naive young woman.
The setup of the story also felt wrong at first; we fall in the middle of a highly complicated situation and for the first few chapters I expected to see one titled Two weeks earlier, because of the huge amount of drama to unpack.
Spoiler: that never comes 🙂
The background of Gracen and Owen is so far fetched it wouldnt make the cut in any script class. How is this believable?? Very weird and it doesnt make sense for him to want to go through with this marriage.
I finished this book out of principle, but with a scowl and a frown, muttering this book sucks when I clicked it closed. I expected more from Sawyer Bennett but this one definitely did not deliver.

I preordered this book and very excited to get it. However, when I started reading it I knew I had heard this story before. For those of us who have read the series up to this point, most of this story can be found in the book “Reed.” I kept waiting for more of something in this book but it didn’t happen. Yes, Marek and Gracen have a child together that she kept a secret until the little girl was 3 years old. Yes, Marek broke up with her and she was devastated by that but they were young and no comparison to keeping a father from his child. I wasn’t crazy about Gracen as a character and the decisions she made throughout the book. I liked Marek and give him a little bit of room to catch up being a father. But in the end of the story I felt like the author didn’t give me enough to give the book 5 stars. I just wanted more for Marek’s story. More in building the relationship back up and more of Marek getting to know Lilly who by the way is just adorable. For me the book was ok and I do recommend it as it is part of a great series. Maybe it is a better story if reading as a stand alone and the reader knows nothing about Marek from the book “Reed.”

**I received an early copy of this title in exchange for an honest review**

Marek is the 11th book in Sawyer Bennett’s Cold Fury Hockey series and while it helps to read all of the books in the series, this title can standalone and you don’t lose anything. What I can say is after reading the previous book in the series, Reed, I was more than ready to get my hands on this one based on the way Reed’s book ended.

Marek Fabritis has had two loves in his life, hockey and his ex-girlfriend Gracen Moore. However when it came down to it years ago, he chose hockey over Gracen. When he gets an anonymous email saying that she’s getting married, there is no way that Marek can let that happen, so he sets out to stop the wedding. Not only is it about not wanting her to end up with someone else, he doesn’t want anyone else to be the father figure to his three year old daughter. A daughter that he has just learned about. A daughter he has missed three years with.

When Marek brings Gracen and Lilly to North Carolina to live with him, you can cut the tension between the two adults with a knife. As Marek begins to get to know Lilly, he can’t seem to get past the deception of Gracen not telling him she was pregnant. Conversely, Gracen is still deeply wounded by the fact that Marek chose hockey over her.

Will the years these two have been apart given them the maturity and clarity to try to make it work between them or is it all they can hope for to co-parent their daughter and move on apart from one another? And, will another secret that Gracen is harboring end up causing more trouble than anyone can imagine?

I really enjoyed the “realness” of this book. It was easy for me to see how the feelings of the characters could happen in the real world and how they both had to really take stock of themselves, their feelings and the best interests of their young child. Sawyer Bennett is one of my favorite authors and this is one of my favorite series and this was certainly another strong offering!

I enjoyed this book but it wasn’t my favourite in the series. I think if I had never read any of the others then I may have given it a higher rating but compared to the stories of some of the other earlier couples, I felt it fell a bit short. The key reason for this was the ending felt rushed and for most of the book Marek seems so conflicted about his feelings for Gracen.

If you enjoy second chance romance’s (I do) and secret baby’s (I don’t mind that) then this is a great book. It’s sad in places but there is humour – mainly in the form of Lilly , their daughter.

I would recommend reading the previous book , Reed, to get the full effect of this book.

I am very excited to read Bishop which is the first book in the new series by Ms Bennett.

HEA? Yes
Cheating? No

Pretty good ice hockey series and this story was about Marek who in the end of the previous book stops his ex-girlfriend from getting married when he finds out he is a father to her daughter.
He had left Gracen behind in his search for fame 4 years previously and she never told him she was pregnant. I liked the characters; however some of this story was a bit far fetched, which makes me think the author is running out of ideas maybe. Also there has been so many books in the series that I forget lots of the previous characters stories. My pet hate with this series is the very short epilogue, but I guess that’s because a lot of the stories run in tandem.
I know there are 2 more books in the pipeline and hopefully that will be the finish, you can have too much of a good thing!

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