I recently enjoyed Allison Temple’s Honeymoon Sweet, so when I saw she had a new book coming out this month, I eagerly snapped up a review copy. Ski-Crossed Lovers is a friends-to-lovers romance between two lifelong friends who are competing for places on the Canadian ski-cross team for the Olympics. I know nothing about the sport, but it’s clear that the author has done her homework because the background is interesting and informative, adding plenty of colour to the story without being info-dumpy or going into too much detail.

Cedric – aka Zed – Bérard and Austin Grimm have been pretty much inseparable since they were kids, and, now twenty-two, they’ve spent almost a lifetime chasing speed, glory and each other down just about every mountain they could find, pushing each other to be better and faster. They’ve always planned to go to the next Olympics together and don’t much care which of them wins and which comes in second – if they’re going to lose to anyone, losing to the other means it won’t be so bad.

After the last race of the season, things between them change massively when Austin, whom Zed might have thought about kissing once or twice but never has, throws caution to the wind and kisses Zed, who is helpless to do anything other than reciprocate. This leads to a spectacular – and very long – night of passionate sex, at the end of which Austin admits he’s been in love with Zed for years. Zed is kind of reeling from this, but Austin’s words do cause him to start really thinking through his feelings. He loves Austin and always has – maybe he just hasn’t registered the difference between loving him and being in love with him because everything between them has always felt so natural and easy? They spend most of the night wearing each other out before having to get up at stupid o’clock the next morning to get to what should be a simple promo shoot – but which turns into tragedy when, on a final downhill run, Austin disappears, falling off the piste and down the side of the mountain.

Austin is very badly injured and spends almost a year recovering his physical strength and fitness, but due to the concussion, he lost a couple of days and has no memory of his night with Zed. Zed is crushed by this and eaten up with guilt, believing himself responsible for Austin’s accident because he was pushing him too hard. This is where the story really comes alive as Zed’s inner conflict comes to the fore – the guilt, the (probable) PTSD, the anguish of not being able to tell Austin he loves him or to be with him as his partner – and in his confusion and pain, he pulls away. Austin is hurt and upset that Zed doesn’t stay in touch with him during his rehab, and watching as these two previously inseparable friends go for months without contact and then struggle to even be in the same space as each other is heart-rending. We’re only ever in Zed’s PoV, so we only know what he’s thinking and feeling, but it’s clear that Austin is equally saddened and bewildered by this new distance between them. Fortunately, the author doesn’t drag this part out too much and they do work things out – but their reconnection brings its own set of problems.

I did enjoy the story, but I sometimes felt as though there wasn’t enough meat on its bones, and because we’re never in Austin’s head I felt like I hardly knew him other than as a kind of extension of Zed (because the same things are important to them both etc.) Their move from besties to having sex for the first time and love declarations happens really early on – I realised later that this is because a lot of the story is about their estrangement and then finding each other again – but obviously I couldn’t know that going in, which meant that the sex/ILYs have pretty much no foundation. I’d have liked to have spent more time with Zed and Austin as friends and seen some actual sexual tension and chemistry between them as they were falling for each other, but the falling – on Austin’s part at least – has already happened off page.

Ski-Crossed Lovers is part of the multi-author Love on the Podium series; I believe some characters recur throughout, but each book stands alone as far as the plotlines and romances go, so you can probably pick up them up in any order. I liked the premise and the author does a great job with the setting and really conveys the rush and excitement of the skiing scenes – but the romance is a bit lacklustre and needed more fleshing out.