Last updated on 05/19/2026
AVAILABLE NOW: CROSBY by Sawyer Bennett is LIVE!
She’s here to expose hockey’s biggest flaws. He’s the complication she never planned on. Neither one is prepared for the sparks that fly every time they collide.
Juno Paxton has built her award-winning documentary career dismantling institutions people blindly worship. Her latest assignment is her most high-profile immerse herself in the league’s newest hockey expansion team—the Portland Wildfire—for an entire season and create a behind-the-scenes film the league can parade around as “authentic.”
Juno doesn’t buy it. Not the hype, not the hero worship, and definitely not the polished personas of pro athletes. She expects egos, theatrics, and plenty of manufactured grit.
What she doesn’t expect is Crosby Hale.
The Wildfire’s starting goalie is stoic, meticulously focused, and infuriatingly camera-shy. He wants nothing to do with her film, her questions, or her insistence that he “show some personality.” Unfortunately for him, the league wants Juno’s documentary to center on the enigmatic goaltender who refuses to cooperate.
But the more time Juno spends with Crosby, the more she glimpses the steady, thoughtful man beneath his guarded exterior. He isn’t the stereotype she’s built her name exposing—he’s better. The more she learns about him, the harder it becomes to keep her documentary, and her heart, objective. And for Crosby, letting Juno in feels less like a mistake and more like the beginning of something worth fighting for.
Warm, witty, and unexpectedly emotional, CROSBY launches the Portland Wildfire series with a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance between a skeptical filmmaker and the goalie determined to stay out of her spotlight… until she becomes the one thing he can’t turn away from.
Why you should read this book:
🔥Hockey Romance
🔥Slow Burn
🔥Opposites Attract
🔥Found Family
🔥Emotionally Guarded Hero
🔥Bold, Unapologetic Heroine
She’s here to expose hockey’s biggest flaws. He’s the complication she never planned on. Neither one is prepared for the sparks that fly every time they collide.
Grab it HERE: https://geni.us/SB_Crosby
Review:
First, let me say that Crosby and Juno are a solid couple. Their chemistry isn’t exactly exploding off the page–they kind of go from sort of interested in each other to feeling like an established, comfortable couple already–but they’re good together. Their black moment was a bit of a nonentity and resolved ridiculously quickly (and at the literal last minute–good thing we’d already seen them comfortable in their relationship or I would have genuinely felt cheated), but given what we knew about both of them it didn’t feel disingenuous. I would have liked to have seen Juno’s personal life/past get a better resolution, but I understand why she made the choice she did there.
We don’t learn a ton about the other players on the team–Crosby’s BFF Arch gets the most page time, though the next book isn’t his–I’m looking forward to getting to know more of them as the series (and their season) continues.
This was OK as a series starter–hopefully the parts that most slowed me down as a reader (absolutely constant descriptions of the fabulousness of the training facility, arena, private plane, etc. of the team and its owner–we get it; he’s crazy rich and all of the above is unbelievably opulent and no expense was ever spared) will be absent from subsequent books, so we can get right to the story and focus there…? Overall there was a lot of description going on all over the book–Crosby and Juno also do a whole lot of explaining in their internal monologues, and TBH that made the book drag a bit too. I really wanted a whole lot more doing and a lot less thinking overall; I started reading the audio version but ended up switching to the ebook since I can read faster than the narrators narrate. No shade on the narrators–they both did a good job–the story’s narrative style just wasn’t quite my cup of tea.
Still, I’m happy to be part of a new hockey town with the Portland Wildfire!
Rating: 3 1/2 stars / C+
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