Lexi LaFleur Brown’s EVENING THE SCORE is a fun hockey-centered romance featuring two broken people who grow and heal while they fall in love. Brody Parker is an NHL player who has just signed with a team as far from his former NHL father as he can get. Living in his dad’s shadow, he meets Olivia Hinckley, a woman out for revenge against Brody’s father. She is willing to use Brody to enact that revenge, but doesn’t expect Brody to be someone she can fall in love with along the way.

This is my first hockey romance, and it won’t be my last thanks to this title. I found Brody and his emotional growth to be more compelling, but that does not make Olivia any less of an interesting heroine. Her backstory is tragic, although some of it can be confusing. She seeks revenge against Brody’s father for a hit he gave her father while they both played in the NHL that ended her father’s career and ultimately led to health problems for the rest of his life. However, this hit happened before Olivia’s birth, and I sometimes had trouble believing she would hate someone so much for something that happened before her birth. I found Brody’s issues with his dad to be much more relatable, as his father is preoccupied with continuing his hockey legacy and cares about nothing else. Brody is a sweet and thoughtful guy, and this is how he ultimately manages to win Olivia over, despite her best attempts to keep him at a distance.

In the beginning, Brody’s issues with his dad are more at the forefront of the story, but the romance slowly takes over, and the book gets so much better when it does. The meet-cute was very different from one I’ve read before, and made me laugh. It sets a nice tone for the rest of the story. Brody has to work hard to bring down Olivia’s walls, and it makes it all the sweeter in the end when he succeeds. I greatly appreciate the fact that Olivia has to work to overcome her own demons and that it wasn’t one-sided in that regard.

There are a few issues that could have been cleared up quickly with a Google search, but they don’t necessarily detract from the story itself. For example, a nonessential character is described as having third-degree burns over eighty percent of their body, but will be back to work soon. The mortality rate for such wounds is 80-95%, so there is no way the character would’ve survived that.

Brown plays hockey herself and is incredibly knowledgeable about the sport. As a hockey fan myself, I greatly appreciate an author writing about a sport they know. She balances the scenes on the ice with the scenes elsewhere, keeping them from becoming tedious or overlong. It makes a romance involving a sport that much easier to read.

EVENING THE SCORE is a great sophomore effort from Lexi LeFleur Brown, with a couple of flawed people who manage to find each other in the craziness of the world. I will definitely be looking out for the next title in the series!