Is Fake Dating My Ex'S Hockey Star Brother Worth Reading?

Could this be on Novel Updates? Although Novel Updates primarily follows translations of Asian novels, they also have a forum for readers of original English stories on various websites, and have a 'where to read' section on the Novel Updates forum for such stories. As this is a community of people who read serialized fiction online, they would likely know of a story such as this, even if it weren't a translation, and you could ask them for information on it. Novel Updates is a great site for serialized fiction readers. Even if the Novel you’re looking for isn’t a translation, Novel Updates is usually a good place to start looking for readers who know the various Novel communities and platforms, both legitimate and otherwise. We don’t allow pirated versions of any Novel on our site, but we do allow discussions of them on legitimate platforms. It’s easier to get answers from knowledgeable readers in specialized communities like this one rather than a more general book community. These folks live and breathe Novel apps and sites. They’ll know of any loopholes or lesser known sites where a Novel might be hosted.

Yes! While many readers wish to devour the huge on-going series (also available on Kindle Unlimited), there are so many delightful, independent published and even smaller pub authors who nail the hockey world so beautifully as well. The romance authors such as Cathryn Fox, Teagan Hunter and Sara Ney publish huge hockey-themed romance series with lots of fake-dating, all centered around the hockey team of one of the main male heroes in each book of the series. While there can be some slight variations in how outlandish the premise of the fake-dating can get (ie: pretend to get engaged to help the heroine get her hands on an inheritance; pretend to be the heroine’s wife in order to help her get a visa to live in the hero’s country), the real meat of these wonderful books centers around the heartwarming, as well as many times humorous, hockey world. There are tons of books, with many 3+ book series about the individual heroes on the same team. So, while there can be many degrees of hotness in the many published hockey-themed romance books, as well as tons of sports-romance cliche’s galore (ie: why we love them in the first place), it’s so wonderful to be able to devour hundreds of pages of hockey-romance bliss for every season of the year.

I've seen this one floating around on my feed. Algorithm tends to throw it at me now. Premise is a little too juicy for me to ignore, but overall it reads as somewhat too dramatic for my tastes (fake mating, ex's enemy, etc.). I gave the first few chapters a read simply out of curiosity, but the initial setup does read somewhat tense as the main character tries to avoid social disaster. Prose is readably simple, though the rest of the emotional developments follow fairly predictably from there. Trashy read that I couldn't look away from is the best way I'd describe this. It's not literature by any stretch of the imagination, but it's very Guilty Pleasure. Main draw to me is the exploration of power dynamics, and the author certainly gets a lot of mileage out of them. All in all, very trashy, very over-the-top, extremely fast-paced romantic drama. Just don't go in here expecting too much in terms of character development.

Does the author write any other stories? Are they a debut writer? Even if they aren’t, every writer starts somewhere. If the author has written a portfolio of trope-driven stories that their audience loves, then this will read exactly like they expect. I haven’t gone and checked out the author’s other works, but from reading this story, it’s clear that they have a solid grasp of the various conventions of the story, and are writing it within those strictures. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good read – rather, that it’s a solid example of this type of story. And for some readers, that’s the highest praise of all.

I borrowed this book to my three friends and each of them texted me at 2AM asking for more. This book gets under your skin. The prose is very simple, but with great precision, just like the author chose every comma intentionally. The themes of redemption and forgiveness are embedded in the story without being heavy-handed. It is melancholic. I wouldn’t call it depressing, though. It’s a very melancholic book. It will make you want to stay up all night and then stare at the ceiling thinking about your own “oceans” and “stars”. Worth reading? Yes.

You can check the author's Linktree in their bio to find a direct link to the FicFlow story page. Sometimes this link is buried under ‘My Works’ or ‘Current Serials’ in the author’s Linktree, so be sure to check there for the most reliable link to download the story. Don’t rely on random blog links that claim to have a PDF version of the story for download – these are likely to be scams that can download malware to your computer. They’d especially try to trick people reading a story that’s received moderate attention.

But there are so many amazing, popular hockey romances written by self-published and indie authors as well (so, so many of them). Trying to get one of these adapted into a film or TV series would be an even more complicated journey than with a traditionally published work. Indie authors might need a literary agent who specializes in film and television rights to shop their work to producers. So a huge Amazon hit in Kindle Unlimited might never make it to the studios of Hollywood, even when published traditionally. It’s not fair but it’s reality.

This may be a regional licensing issue. As someone who lives in Canada, I occasionally find that stories that my US/UK friends can access on an app are not available to me. I've had friends send me direct links to stories they're reading on an app, only to find that I receive a message stating that the content is not available in my region. The mess of publishing rights for digital content is so complex. You might try setting your VPN to a US location and seeing if you can find and access the title within the app's catalog (since the title is presumably available on the app in the US). This approach worked for me with video and music streaming services, so it's not an entirely out-of-left-field ask for a service delivering serialized fiction locked behind various geo-restricted content deals.

This romance is very culturally specific, even though it’s about an American Navy SEAL. There are many parts of the story telling that are very typical of translated East Asian web novels. I actually feel like this would be best read on Webnovel, because it is a web novel platform that hosts many novels of this exact style and length. The translation is probably done with the typical East Asian web novel reader in mind, so that’s just another plus for readers of that style of fiction.

Reading it feels like watching a slow-motion train crash where you’re pulling for both sides to change direction before it’s too late, watching as each mistake plays out before you can even warn them to change course. It’s horrifically fascinating. For me, the experience was not ‘enjoyable’ in any conventional sense – it was stressful, often frustrating, and, at times, even emotionally draining. But I did experience it. I found it to be utterly compelling and at times, I couldn’t look away. The wreckage of the characters’ lives at the end of the novel was left for me to attempt to piece together and that in itself is a skill – be it on an author to create such reactions, or on a reader to recognize them for what they are.