Review - Break Away

Title: Break Away
Author: Lisa B. Kamps
Publishing Date: 2015
Genre: Contemporary
Rating: C+
Sensuality: Hot
Book Disclosure: I received this book in a goodie bag at the RT book convention 2016.

Break Away is the fifth book in the Baltimore Banners series.  The Baltimore Banners are a hockey team.  This is the first book I have read by this author and I just jumped right in this series with the fifth book.  Break Away is a story about a couple who went through a tragic event five years earlier and their relationship fell apart.  Emily Poole runs into her old flame, JP Larocque at her niece's hockey game.  JP after seeing Emily all this time wants to rekindle their relationship, but Emily wants nothing more than to forget their painful past.

I struggled with this book a little.  The story is hyper focused on what happened between JP and Emily five years before.  The tragic event shapes the whole storyline and ultimately overshadows everything else.  For example, the author never really goes into JP's past, like his family history.  It would have been nice to understand how JP became a hockey player, is his family still in France, does he have any brothers and sisters, etc.  You get the picture.  We know a little bit more about Emily, but again everything centers around how her life changed after the big tragic event. 

The story starts out a little slowly and about half way through, I was getting more into the story.  I liked Emily and JP's personalities, that of which I knew about them.  At first Emily was a little off putting to me because she kept pushing JP away so much, but then she really started to change as a character.  She decides to stop living in the past and to move forward with her life.  I really started to enjoy the book when she comes to that realization.

I don't know if it would have made a difference to read the other books in the series first.  I am not sure if I would have gotten more back story on JP and Emily in the other books.  For me this was an okay read.