Book Review: The Cutting Edge by Lisa Daily

Release Date: June 22, 2023

An Olympic figure skater gets brained by a stray puck shot by the captain of the professional hockey team at the facility they both train at sounds like the set up for a great book. And it was. Sadly, the book couldn’t sustain the amazing start it had and the second half went downhill.

The first half was amazing. Logan’s over the top simping for Coco was a thousand kinds of adorable. As was his relationship with his daughter. The writing was well-paced and the insta-connection between the main characters was golden. I liked the dual POV, the voice was great, I was loving it.

And then her medical diagnosis changes (I have a million thoughts on how this was handled) and everything goes downhill, both for Coco and in the book. A lot of things happened just for convenience to the plot (no one stays in the hospital for a week for a concussion, especially when they have people at home to support them) and didn’t necessarily make sense within the story or were clearly unresearched.

There were a lot of underdeveloped character pressure points which made certain scenes lackluster or even pointless (I’m looking at you, restaurant confrontation). And Coco’s lucky charm plotline felt completely unnecessary. I will allow that I just hate that kind of plot in general and have a personal bias against it so might be overly harsh here.

Since I read an ARC of this book, I tried really hard not to judge on the errors but there were multiple continuity errors and discrepancies in actions between narrators. The timeline jumped without warning in ways that didn’t make sense and were jarring, causing me to have to reread the last few pages to see if I missed something. I feel like this book had so much potential that went unrealized.