New Release: For The Win by Kelly Jamieson

This is the 4th installment of the Hockey series revolving around the Wynn family. Harrison is a character we have seen before, but really get to know him here.

I enjoyed getting to know Harrison and Arya. Both are engaging characters that have struggles and baggage. I appreciated how they were both trying to deal with those issues even when it caused them to butt heads periodically. Harrison is a fun hero. Yes, he is a hockey player, but he’s a bit of a gentler hero than expected from a professional athlete and is very open about his emotional growth.

As much as I enjoyed this book, I struggled with it too. While Harrison and Arya are the main romantic characters, the larger Wynn family and the related dynamics seemed to play a larger role here than I remember from some of the other books, especially given Harrison’s place in the family. The piece I really struggled with was the very end – actually the last sentence of the book. I think it’s the set up for book #5, but it was so out of left field that it was jarring and distracted from the warm and fuzzy feelings I had going on.

This is supposed to be a stand-alone work, and technically it is. Ms Jamieson does an excellent job of weaving pertinent details into the story, but I feel like the secondary cast here is just too large to truly be a stand-alone. There are just too many details to keep track of if you have not read at least one of the previous books.