CHECKING ALL THE BOXES

Dr. Maren Blake rebuilds careers other surgeons write off. She runs Chicago’s premier sports medicine institute, takes the cases the team doctors flinch at, and has spent five years being the person who fixes what’s broken — partly because she’s good at it, and partly because five years ago, as an exhausted resident in Milwaukee, she misdiagnosed a young AHL player’s hairline fracture as a bone bruise and nearly ended his career before it started. She has carried that name in a locked drawer ever since.

Then his case lands on her desk. Jaxon Cross. NHL center. Career-threatening knee. And he doesn’t remember her.

Before Maren can decide whether to tell him, there’s the first session where he flinches when she touches his knee and apologizes like he’s not used to anyone being gentle, the way he calls her Doc in a voice that has clearly never softened for anyone, the morning he shows up forty minutes early and pretends it’s a coincidence, the protein bar that appears on her desk after she mentions skipping lunch, the locked treatment room where she counts his reps and he counts the number of times she tucks her hair behind her ear, and the moment three months in when he steps onto the ice for the first time since surgery and looks at her across the rink like she just gave him his entire life back.

She’s spent five years performing competence so flawlessly that no one can see the guilt underneath, terrified that one mistake will define her if anyone ever finds out. He’s spent his whole life being uncoachable on purpose because trusting people is how he got hurt the first time, and the only person he’s ever fully trusted is the woman currently lying to him every single day. A six-month rehab timeline is about to run out.

Sports romance with surgical precision, locker room banter, and the slow devastation of falling in love with the one person you can’t afford to lose. The kind of book you read with your phone facedown because you know the moment he finds out is coming, and you need both hands free when it does.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ Romance > Sports sits at 36.2 sales-to-comp (Hot Mainstream) with 661 estimated daily sales per top 20 title — the highest sales-to-competition ratio in the entire sports romance category cluster

→ Hockey romance is the dominant sub-sport at 51% of all titles and $2M/month in royalties — Google search interest for “hockey romance” has now overtaken “sports romance”

→ Triple-stacks the top-revenue tropes: enemies-to-lovers ($1.22M/mo), grumpy/sunshine ($876K/mo), and forced proximity ($940K/mo) — every monthly leader in one book

→ Adult pro-NHL setting with female orthopedic surgeon heroine fills a real gap — the top 100 skews heavily college-hockey with trainer/journalist heroines

→ Cross-media tailwinds peaking right now — Heated Rivalry (Crave/HBO Max, Nov 2025, 10.6M avg viewers) and Off Campus (Prime Video, May 2026, renewed pre-launch) are pulling new readers into hockey romance

→ Hidden-past guilt arc earns a real third-act breakup — distinguishes from miscommunication-driven breakups that dominate the category

TROPES:
• Enemies to Lovers
• Grumpy/Sunshine
• Forced Proximity
• Forbidden Romance
• Hidden Past
• Doctor/Patient
• Workplace Romance
• Slow Burn
• He Falls First
• Third Act Breakup
• Found Family 

HEAT LEVEL: Open Door / Medium-High Spice*
*includes Dial the Heat™ guide to adjust heat level 

Perfect for fans of: Elle Kennedy, Hannah Grace, Stephanie Archer, and Sarina Bowen