Emerjas

Hudson used to be a promising figure skater. Now she bakes cupcakes at her mother's restaurant and helps to keep it running while dreaming over what could have been. When a chance to return to figure skating appears, Hudson is ready to try for it. But with figure skating training, baking, school, working at her mom's restaurant as a waitress, training the boy's hockey team (in return for use of their ice rink for her own training), and balancing relationships with her family and friends, Hudson's got a lot to do.

Throughout the book, I kept wondering when Hudson had the time to sleep or how the heck she was able to do all the things she did. When she baked for the restaurant, she had to start very early in the morning before anyone else got there to get the baking done for the day. She had to go to school five days a week and do all the homework for that. She had to set aside quite a bit of time to properly train for a figure skating competition. She was training her school's hockey team. When a waitress quit suddenly, Hudson had to take over all of her shifts, in addition to the time she already worked there. All cupcake orders that the restaurant got were completed by her, as far as I could tell. Plus she's found a love triangle to be the center of. There was a ridiculous amount of stuff going on for her. It's really no wonder her friendship with Dani, her best friend, didn't get as much of Hudson's attention as usual. She had no time.

Hudson's main love interest was Josh, a hockey player who first offered her the deal to train the team in exchange for rink time. She tells us how much she likes him and how great he is, but I never really saw it. Add in a ton of miscommunication (that could have very easily been fixed) that stalled any advance in their relationship, and I just didn't care about them as a couple. Now her other love interest, Will, actually got relationship development with Hudson, and I could see the attraction between the two of them. I was far more invested in the two of them.

The part I particularly enjoyed about this book was Hudson trying to achieve the dreams that she had been obsessing over for years, only to discover that things had changed since she first had those dreams. Hudson was so set on what her future should look like that she lost focus of most everything else. Not that that'd be difficult to do with how much she had on her shoulders.

While I enjoyed the book, I do wish it had included fewer problems for Hudson to deal with. There was so much going on in her life that it really just felt like overkill.