As my summer break comes to an end, I wanted to write a review on my last summer read. In this college romance, Collide follows two Dalton University students with very polar opposite personalities and ambitions. Summer, psychology student with Honors, is determined to do whatever it takes to be accepted into her dream master’s program next year, with hopes of becoming a sports psychologist in the future. Aiden, captain of the Dalton University hockey team, has his eyes on the prize of maintaining his strong performance in college hockey as an early commit to a pro-hockey team. When the hockey team gets in trouble for recent party consequences, Aiden takes the blame, putting himself on probation with community service. In addition to training youth hockey players during his off time, he is to participate in Summer’s final thesis as an experiment participant on the psychology of burnout in sports, which works out in the long run, as Aiden hasn’t realized his commitments had run him too thin. Neither of them wants this, as Aiden thinks this entire agreement is a waste of his precious time, and Summer despises hockey (with good reason, you’ll learn). However, the more time they spend together, they realize they hold a deeper connection than they thought. Will they be able to go back to their separate lives once Aiden completes his mandatory community service and Summer finishes her thesis? If you like the tropes of forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers, and all things hockey romance, this is your next read.
I liked this book — I had liked a book written by Khabar (Spiral) and hadn’t realized Collide technically was the first book of this hockey series — whoops. The two books intertwine with character references, but follow different couples, so they sort of feel like standalones. I will say, I liked the second book better, and you can read the Spiral review on my page. While I liked the dynamic of Aiden and Summer and the vulnerability that they shared with each other, the sassy woman character design got old. Be nice, Summer, sheesh. I get it, Summer has some past emotional trauma with hockey, as we learn her dad was a pro-hockey player and her relationship with him was subpar, but it didn’t feel like she needed to be rude to the very singular opportunity she had to getting into her dream postgrad program (her advisor, who she cannot say no to, told her to write on hockey). Aiden did have some cockiness, I’ll give her that to be kind of snappy, but she was quite rude in my opinion.
And the miscommunication trope was very drawn out, it was killing me — it’s understandable in some circumstances, a miscommunication is inevitable in any relationship, but you cannot hope and expect someone will trust you if you cannot even be honest with them in the first place to trust their reaction! Communication goes both ways, and Aiden was doing so much for Summer (e.g., to be with her, to keep her safe). Where was the return? Real relationships have balance shown in different ways!
Other than that, I liked the plot, though I was disappointed that the entire psychology study hyped up for most of the plot and we didn’t really get any insight on the tests themselves nor the results (maybe it’s the psych career ambition for me that I wanted to learn more). Was Aiden actually burnt out, or was one person’s word the final result? It makes me think that some authors only write so much on a subject they know about — I don’t know Khabra’s background on the subject of psychology, but it didn’t seem like much substance, though it was made into MUCH of Summer’s character.
Overall, it was okay, very spicy. I appreciated the sweet acts of service and little moments highlighted in Aiden trying to win Summer over (it was swoon-worthy). I’d recommend this book.
Cheers to summer!
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