UNDONE

A hockey enforcer transfers to a new college to finish out his senior year.

Toren Kane has a reputation as college hockey’s bad boy. He’s a reckless rule-breaker in his personal life and a violent, aggressive player on the ice. Toren switches schools every year, and his penchant for drinking and fighting lost him an early NHL bid. At the end of his junior year, Toren’s hard but clean hit knocked a competitor out cold and he transferred schools again, landing at Waterfell University for his senior year. Ostracized by most of his teammates, Toren hopes to keep his head down and polish his reputation enough for another shot at the NHL. Toren is appalled to discover the new assistant coach for defensemen is Christopher LaBlanc, a ruthless, cruel man who coached Toren throughout his childhood. Christopher’s only daughter, Lily, has also just transferred to Waterfell after flunking out of Harvard. Toren and Lily were best friends in childhood and became secret lovers as teenagers until an unnamed tragedy ripped them apart at the end of high school. Now, Lily suffers from debilitating depression and her only solace is painting. She hopes to gain some independence from her domineering father and repair her broken relationship with Toren, but her characterization often reads as childish and immature instead of sensitive and vulnerable. Toren’s and Lily’s dreamy, almost ethereal narration moves fluidly from past to present with very little anchoring the characters to the real world except each other. Their backstory is underwritten and confusing, while present-day scenes are disjointed and lack the coherence that would make for a satisfying, believable romance.

This much angst without a grounding in reality makes for an unconvincing romance.