Review: "Center Ice" by Cate Cameron (Corrigan Falls Raiders #1)


Note: This ARC was provided by Entangled Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.


Sixteen-year-old Karen Webber left behind her life in Toronto to move to Corrigan Falls, a small town in Canada, to live with her estranged father and his picture-perfect family. The loss of her mother still weighs on her and she would rather be anywhere else but where she is now. She experiences moments of peace and solitude when she goes on her early morning runs, but when one squirrel decides to wreak havoc during her run, Karen's rescued by Taylor MacDonald, star player for the Corrigan Falls Raiders.

Seventeen-year-old Taylor MacDonald has enjoyed the trappings of being his town's currently most famous and most popular hockey player in the past, but he's beginning to grow weary of it all. The pressure is on more than ever before, with his father and his agent breathing down his neck to perform in order to be drafted by an NHL team. But when rescues Karen Webber from a squirrel on a mission, Taylor is able to open his eyes and heart and sees that there's more to life than hockey and puck bunnies.

Center Ice by Cate Cameron is the first novel in the Corrigan Falls Raiders series, which is about the players of an amateur hockey team by the same name. While this is a young adult (YA) story, there are a couple of themes, i.e. premarital sex and underage drinking, that may be better suited for older teens. Book one is about the team's captain, Taylor MacDonald, a guy whose whole life has been geared toward becoming a successful professional hockey player, and Karen Webber, a city girl who moves to the small town of Corrigan Falls after the death of her mother and has difficulty adjusting to life with a father she barely knows and his wife and children. They both feel stuck in the middle of plans the adults in their lives have for them, but once they find each other, it's almost as if they've discovered their other half.

I liked both Taylor and Karen, both teenagers who are standing in the middle of their own respective crossroads, wishing they could take the reins and control which direction they should head off to next but believing they can't. It brings to mind how most teens probably feel at that age, when they're at the cusp of still being considered a child but will be an adult in a year or two. Taylor and Karen weren't perfect people, having made mistakes in the past and still making a fair share of mistakes in the present; but you could observe them doing a good bit of growing up in the story, both maturing and learning important life lessons. They were certainly acting their age and that made the story more real, which I hope will help readers of the same age group be inspired by Taylor's and Karen's own journey as individuals.

This was a good story about growing up and how it's about making mistakes and being able to pick yourself up and keep on working your way to whatever goals you've set for yourself. It's also about family and how we don't always get to choose the family we're born into but making the most of it and giving one another a chance in order to see the good instead of focusing on the not-so-good. And yes, it's about falling in love and recognizing that the person you love had a life before they met you and that who they were then does not necessarily mean that's who they are now. I may no longer be a teenager but I know how to appreciate a story worth reading and this was certainly one I was glad to have read and reviewed. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the Corrigan Falls Raiders series and I'm giving Center Ice five stars. ♥

Release Date: 19 May 2015

Date Read: 12 May 2015

Learn more about Cate Cameron here.

Pre-order Center Ice on Amazon | B&N | Kobo.

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