‘Luka’ by Alisa Jean
Series: A Los Angeles Quakes Hockey Series #2
Published: April 17, 2025
Genre: Romance, Sports Romance
Format: e-book
Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1/2
Synopsis
As the hottest left-winger in the league, I was the handsome golden boy for the L.A. Quakes. But after suffering horrific injuries during a game, my life is on a breakaway to disaster. My biggest fear is a darkness from my past is about to repeat itself. All I want to do is hide from the world, but fate has another plan.
Feisty beauty Liliana Alvarez doesn’t suffer fools lightly, especially when it comes to her kids in her new non-profit outreach. She’ll drag me, kicking and screaming, if necessary, from the hole I’ve crawled into if it’s the last thing she does. For some reason, she is patient enough to wait for me to heal and something sparks between us, wounds, and all. But her abusive ex-boyfriend threatens to shatter our hopes of a happily ever after.
Can enemies-turned-lovers help save each other or is the ice tilted against us?
My Thoughts
Luke by Alisa Jean is not for someone looking for a light, fluffy hockey romance. Luka catches your heart and emotions right from the start. When I started reading the book, I didn’t think I would immediately be going Oh my god, I can’t believe I just read what I did. What happens right from the start is something you can clearly picture in your head and would hate to see happen in real life, let alone in a book.
Luka, who is the male lead of the book, is everything someone looks for in a guy. He is kind and caring and pays attention to his partner. He is also very smart, and that is shown by him knowing at least five different languages and thinking of picking up another one. Not only does he know the languages but he also learns about the culture. For someone to take the time to dive deep like that shows something about them. Even tho he seems great, he is dealing with PTSD not only from the incident from the start of the book but something from his childhood.
But that is where Liliana, our female lead, comes in. She is trained to notice PTSD and panic attacks in children as she started and works for a foundation that works with children who are not in the best of situations. She knew the signs, and having this experience, I think was great because she didn’t feel sorry for Luka; in fact, she wanted him to get the help that he needed and knew what to do when he was in the middle of a panic attack. As the book goes on, you will find out she is dealing with her own thing as she does have a stalker. The way the stalker situation played out was not how I thought it would, to be honest, and it had me on the edge of my seat, not able to put down the book as I wanted to see how it would play out.
Luka is book two in the A Los Angeles Quakes Hockey Series, but the good news is that you don’t have to read book one to know what is going on in this book. Yes, the characters from the previous book do show up in this one, but they are not the main focus, and you get enough of the backstory to not be lost. Luka is written by Alisa Jean, who is not just one person but two. Alisa Jean is a pseudonym for Marla A. White and CJ Bahr, who are the two authors who have brought us Luka and the other book in the series.
Luka is a 4 1/2 star read for me. This book was enjoyable from start to finish, but with the subject matter it dealt with, it was a harder read, and for me, I needed to take my time to get through it depending on my mood or the day I had. This book, while it did deal with a lot of emotion and hard stuff, was not light on the spice. This is a 4 Chili Pepper on the Spice Level. While there were a good chunk of spicy scenes, there were times the authors just did a fade to black, which I liked. We don’t need to know every detail, but it shows that they wanted to show more than just that when it comes to the story.
Luka will be out on April 17, 2025, wherever you get your books.
I would like to thank Torch Lit Ink for the ARC Copy of this book. Getting the ARC Copy did not influence my thoughts on the book as they are all my own
