If You Liked Icebreaker, Here's What to Read Next
Bookdot Team • •
#icebreaker#hannah grace#readalikes#hockey romance#sports romance#grumpy sunshine#forced proximity
Anastasia Allen has one season left to make it count. She’s a competitive figure skater heading into her final year at Maple Hills University, and when rink renovations force her to share ice time with the men’s hockey team, she’s assigned to train alongside Nate Reid — the team’s star player, a guy with a reputation for burning through hookups and skipping practice. Neither of them wants the arrangement. Anastasia is carrying trauma from a past relationship that’s left her unable to be touched without flinching, and Nate is coasting on charm because caring about anything too openly has never worked out for him. Hannah Grace self-published Icebreaker in 2022, and BookTok did the rest — quote edits, rink-side banter clips, and thirst-driven momentum turned it into one of the platform’s defining hockey romances before Wednesday Books picked it up for wide release. It has held a spot on the New York Times bestseller list for well over a year since.
What makes Icebreaker land isn’t just the sport or the slow burn — it’s that Grace builds the entire romance around consent and healing rather than around the trauma itself. Every step forward between Anastasia and Nate is negotiated, paced, and consensual in a way that turns the spice, when it finally arrives, into something earned rather than shocking.
What You’re Actually Chasing
Before the list, it’s worth naming the specific ingredients Grace is working with, because “sports romance” covers a lot of ground and Icebreaker is doing something more particular than most books filed under that tag.
The forced proximity is the engine of the whole book — Anastasia and Nate don’t choose each other, a scheduling conflict puts them on the same ice every morning, and the relationship has to survive daily contact neither of them signed up for. The grumpy-sunshine dynamic gives the banter its snap, with Nate’s easy charm colliding against Anastasia’s guarded, prickly exterior until neither read is quite accurate anymore. The healing-through-intimacy arc raises the emotional stakes past the sport itself — Anastasia’s trauma means every physical step has to be built on trust before it can turn into anything else. And running under all of it is the college sports team culture, the locker rooms, road trips, and found-family teammates that give the whole book its lived-in, campus-specific texture.
The books below lean hardest into one or more of those ingredients — some chase the rink, some the banter, some the healing arc, some the team itself.
The Deal by Elle Kennedy — For the Original College Hockey Arrangement
Elle Kennedy’s 2015 novel, the first in her Off-Campus series, pairs Hannah Wells, a tone-deaf a cappella singer, with Garrett Graham, the college hockey team’s captain, in a fake-dating deal — she needs his help getting closer to her crush, he needs a real girlfriend to convince his ex he’s moved on. What starts as a transaction turns into something neither of them planned, playing out against the same college hockey backdrop of practices, road games, and a tight-knit team that Grace builds around Nate.
Like Icebreaker, The Deal runs on an arrangement that forces two people who wouldn’t otherwise cross paths into constant contact, and lets the banter do the work of building intimacy before either character admits what’s happening.
The Icebreaker connection: A college hockey star at the center of the romance, a fake or forced arrangement that keeps the leads in each other’s orbit, and a slow shift from banter to something real.
Him by Sarina Bowen & Elle Kennedy — For the Slow Burn Between Teammates
Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy’s 2016 novel follows Wes Lowe and Jamie Canning, two hockey players and childhood best friends who reunite in college after years of unresolved tension, told in alternating first-person POV. Neither will admit what he wants first, and the slow burn stretches across an entire hockey season of practices, travel, and the kind of proximity that makes avoidance impossible.
Where Icebreaker forces Anastasia and Nate together through a scheduling conflict, Him forces Wes and Jamie together through the sport itself — but both books share the same patient pacing, letting attraction simmer under competitive banter for most of the story before either character breaks.
The Icebreaker connection: A hockey-team setting that keeps the leads in daily contact, dual points of view that let you watch both sides fall at different speeds, and a slow burn that earns its payoff.
Us by Sarina Bowen & Elle Kennedy — For the Relationship After the First Yes
The direct sequel to Him, Bowen and Kennedy’s 2016 follow-up picks up Wes and Jamie’s relationship once they’re actually together, following them into the pressures of pro hockey, public visibility, and the harder work of staying together once the will-they-won’t-they tension is gone. It’s a rarer thing in the genre: a book willing to sit in the after, not just the chase.
Readers who finished Icebreaker wanting more of Anastasia and Nate navigating life as an actual couple, rather than just the will-they-won’t-they, will recognize the same instinct in Us — Bowen and Kennedy trust that a couple’s real conflicts can be just as compelling as the ones that kept them apart.
The Icebreaker connection: A hockey romance that keeps going past the first kiss, and a couple who have to learn to be together in public as much as in private.
Wildfire by Hannah Grace — For More of the Maple Hills Hockey World
Hannah Grace’s 2023 follow-up stays inside the same Maple Hills University world as Icebreaker, this time centering Jack and Josie — secondary characters readers met through Nate’s orbit — after a chaotic night throws them together and a subsequent road trip refuses to let them stay apart. Jack’s guarded and prickly where Josie is warm and unfiltered, giving the book its own grumpy-sunshine charge alongside the forced proximity of a shared car and a shared secret.
If what you loved most about Icebreaker was the specific texture of Grace’s world — the team dynamics, the campus, the banter style — Wildfire is the most direct next step, built in the same universe with the same voice.
The Icebreaker connection: The same Maple Hills hockey setting and supporting cast, a grumpy-sunshine pairing, and forced proximity via a road trip neither character can escape.
Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu — For the Found-Family Hockey Team Culture
Ngozi Ukazu’s Eisner-nominated webcomic and graphic novel follows Eric “Bitty” Bittle, a former figure skater turned college hockey player at fictional Samwell University, as he navigates a new sport, a found-family team of teammates who become his closest friends, and a slow-building crush on team captain Jack Zimmermann. It’s warmer and more wholesome in tone than Icebreaker, but the locker-room camaraderie and rink-centered daily life are drawn with the same specificity.
Where Icebreaker uses the team mostly as backdrop to Nate and Anastasia’s arc, Check, Please! puts that found-family hockey culture front and center — and Bitty’s own background as a figure skater crossing into hockey mirrors the sport-crossing setup Grace builds for Anastasia.
The Icebreaker connection: A figure-skater-to-hockey-world crossover, a tight-knit college team that functions as found family, and a slow-burn romance built on daily rink proximity.
The Hating Game by Sally Thorne — For Banter That Could Cut Glass
Sally Thorne’s 2016 novel traps Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman, two executive assistants at a publishing company, in adjoining desks and a bitter rivalry for the same promotion. Their office games — staring contests, deliberate needling, a running scorecard of small cruelties — read exactly like the rink-side sparring that opens Icebreaker, minus the skates.
Grace and Thorne both understand that the sharpest romantic tension comes from characters who insist they can’t stand each other while clearly cataloging each other’s every move. The Hating Game trades the sports setting for a corporate one, but the verbal sparring-as-foreplay is identical.
The Icebreaker connection: Enemies-adjacent banter sharp enough to double as flirting, forced daily proximity through work rather than sport, and a slow burn that runs almost entirely on dialogue.
Twisted Love by Ana Huang — For the Guarded Hero and the Heroine Reclaiming Her Body
Ana Huang’s 2021 novel, the first in her Twisted series, pairs Ava Chen with Alex Volkov, her brother’s best friend, after she moves into his apartment and finds herself living alongside a man as emotionally walled-off as he is protective. Ava carries her own history that makes physical intimacy fraught, and Huang paces the relationship’s physical side with the same careful, consent-forward attention Grace gives Anastasia and Nate.
Where Icebreaker is built on a rink, Twisted Love is built on a shared apartment, but both books center a heroine relearning what her body can want on her own terms, opposite a hero whose guardedness is really just fear of losing her.
The Icebreaker connection: A forced-proximity setup outside of choice, a heroine navigating past trauma toward intimacy at her own pace, and a hero whose gruffness is a cover for how much he actually cares.
Beach Read by Emily Henry — For the Grumpy-Sunshine Neighbors Who Can’t Stay Away
Emily Henry’s 2020 novel puts January Andrews, a hopeless-romantic writer facing a creative block, next door to Gus Everett, a literary novelist as gloomy as she is warm, after both inherit or rent houses on the same stretch of coast. A genre-swap writing challenge forces them into each other’s daily orbit all summer, and the grumpy-sunshine chemistry does the rest.
It’s a quieter, non-sports version of what makes Nate and Anastasia work — two people who read as opposites on the surface, thrown into forced proximity by circumstance rather than choice, discovering the read was wrong the whole time.
The Icebreaker connection: A textbook grumpy-sunshine pairing, forced proximity through circumstance rather than romance, and banter that slowly reveals real vulnerability underneath.
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren — For Fake-Dating Forced Proximity With an Edge
Christina Lauren’s 2019 novel strands Olive Torres and Ethan Thomas, the perpetually feuding best man and maid of honor at her twin sister’s wedding, on a paid honeymoon together after food poisoning wipes out the rest of the wedding party. Trapped in close quarters and forced to pretend they’re a couple, their running antagonism curdles into something else entirely.
Like Icebreaker, the setup depends on two people who actively dislike each other’s public persona getting stuck together by circumstance — and on Christina Lauren trusting that the friction itself is what makes the eventual softening land.
The Icebreaker connection: A forced pairing neither character chose, sharp mutual antagonism that masks real attraction, and a slow unraveling of the “enemy” read as proximity does its work.
Where to Go From Icebreaker
If Nate and Anastasia’s world is what hooked you, the most direct next step is staying in it — Hannah Grace has continued building out the Maple Hills hockey universe beyond Icebreaker itself, following different couples from the same circle of teammates and friends through further installments. Readers who want the fullest picture of that world should plan to keep going past the original book.
What ties every title on this list together, and what makes Icebreaker worth its BookTok reputation in the first place, is the same throughline: two people who don’t choose each other, stuck together by circumstance, whose banter is doing more emotional work than either of them wants to admit. That’s a difficult balance to strike — funny enough to keep the pages turning, tender enough to earn the payoff — and the fact that Grace pulled it off well enough to carry a self-published debut onto bestseller lists says as much about her instincts as any single scene on the ice.
Building a TBR out of every rink, road trip, and slow burn on this list? Track them all — and everything you read next — in Bookdot.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Icebreaker by Hannah Grace spicy?
- Yes. Icebreaker starts slow and banter-driven but builds into a high-heat new adult romance, with explicit scenes that become central to Anastasia's healing arc in the back half of the book. Readers sensitive to sexual assault backstory and detailed intimacy should check content warnings first.
- Do I need to read Icebreaker before Wildfire?
- You don't strictly have to, since Wildfire follows a different couple, but reading Icebreaker first gives you the full context for Maple Hills University, the hockey and figure-skating world Hannah Grace built, and the secondary characters who carry over into Jack and Josie's story.
- Why did Icebreaker blow up on BookTok?
- Hannah Grace originally self-published Icebreaker in 2022, and readers on TikTok drove it to viral status through edits and shared quotes centered on Nate and Anastasia's banter and slow-burn tension. Wednesday Books later acquired and re-released it, and it has spent well over a year on the New York Times bestseller list.